Troubled Lovers in History: A Sequence of Poems

... Goldbarth's "Troubled Lovers in History" is a hilarious, often touching meditation on the failure of his marriage. Like scientists seeking a Supertheory for random events, husband and wife wanted a curative Grand Explanation of their woes, and these poems gather Goldbarth's miscellaneous data from a wild ransacking of pre-history, post-Einsteinian hyperspace, Lin Foo's Chinese Carryout, and an old theory that an element called septon is the cause of cancer, leprosy, scurvy, and ringworm. He finds some patterns. Thanks to Wilhelm and Bertha Roentgen's discovery of X-rays, Goldbarth sees into the Roentgens' marriage and concludes that everyone (especially one's spouse) has a weird, secret beauty. Scenes from a contemporary couple's first try at cohabitation alternate with snippets from Marco Polo on Chinese practices "which are not our way," "which we do not do here" - one of the lovers is learning that the other is actually a complete foreigner. But no partner is more mystifying than oneself, when "every 'me' has a zip-out not-me lining." So, not surprisingly, surprises pop up everywhere. Consider the diamond-string-like pupil of a gecko's eye, consider trompe l'oeil art, neurosurgery, beer - consider Cousin Deedee! No wonder the ancient writer Pliny believed in a mouthless race of people nourished by fragrances. No wonder we believe our marriage might survive "and stars will sing of this / to starfish, in the language that they share / because they share a shape." Goldbarth yanks us right into his brilliant, encyclopedic streams of compulsive talk. Like Pliny, he'll "feed us any gee-whiz scrap of balderdash / and he won't go away," and I, for one, am glad.

Goldbarth's "Troubled Lovers in History" is a hilarious, often touching meditation on the failure of his marriage. Like scientists seeking a Supertheory for random events, husband and wife wanted a curative Grand Explanation of their woes, and these poems gather Goldbarth's miscellaneous data from a wild ransacking of pre-history, post-Einsteinian hyperspace, Lin Foo's Chinese Carryout, and an old theory that an element called septon is the cause of cancer, leprosy, scurvy, and ringworm. He finds some patterns. Thanks to Wilhelm and Bertha Röntgen's discovery of X-rays, Goldbarth sees into the Röntgens' marriage and concludes that everyone (especially one's spouse) has a weird, secret beauty. Scenes from a contemporary couple's first try at cohabitation alternate with snippets from Marco Polo on Chinese practices "which are not our way," "which we do not do here" - one of the lovers is learning that the other is actually a complete foreigner. But no partner is more mystifying than oneself, when "every 'me' has a zip-out not-me lining." So, not surprisingly, surprises pop up everywhere. Consider the diamond-string-like pupil of a gecko's eye, consider trompe l'oeil art, neurosurgery, beer - consider Cousin Deedee! No wonder the ancient writer Pliny believed in a mouthless race of people nourished by fragrances. No wonder we believe our marriage might survive "and stars will sing of this / to starfish, in the language that they share / because they share a shape." Goldbarth yanks us right into his brilliant, encyclopedic streams of compulsive talk. Like Pliny, he'll "feed us any gee-whiz scrap of balderdash / and he won't go away," and I, for one, am glad.

Goldbarth is one of a handful of contemporary poets worth reading. This book is a pleasure -- no surprise there.