News at Eleven: Two people separated by thousands

of miles are often closer than two people sitting right next to each other on a bus--and [Albert] Goldbarth celebrates these surprising coincidences.

Of course, folding up these thousands of miles into an armspan often requires a meandering mental journey, Goldbarth's trademark digressive style. It's tempting to skip ahead in his longest and most dense poems, to cut right to the gorgeous synthesis at the end, a move at which he undeniably excels. Goldbarth himself pokes fun at his excessive verbosity, his tendency to get caught up so in the wordplay that the digression becomes a world in itself: "And I could spin this verbal fluff all day:/gavotte, guffaw, grisaille É so what?"

from Bookslut: Everyday People by Albert Goldbarth

~~~~~~~~~~~