Selfish

"If Goldbarth belongs to a school, he is surely its sole member. He's simply . . . one of our most generous working poets." --Rumpus



And you



perhaps don't like this poem: its free verse

or its narrative or the way it uses

gender or the heavy-handed

word-play of its title.



Like I care.



I wrote this for me.

--from "'Try the Selfish'"

In his latest collection, the incomparable Albert Goldbarth explores all things "self-ish": the origins of identity, the search for ancestry, the neurology of self-awareness, and the line between "self" and "other." Whether one line long or ten pages, whether uproariously comic or steeped in gravitas, these are poems that address our human essence.