I really liked the great old and new poems in this book. They inspired me to write some of my own.

Albert Goldbarth stretches across space and time to reveal the great essential truth of life.

I read this book years ago, and it forced me into a love of poetry. Beyond simple poetry, many of his works can be described as essay-poems. They are deep, (often) extremely personal, expond on a simple truth of nature, but in a way that must be re-read and pondered; bringing greater awareness and "life" as a result. His other works are excellent, with varying themes, but this stands slightly above ALL others. I have literally loned my book to dozons of people to read who usually share my opinion. Not an easy read at all, but always wise, insightful, volnerable, and true.

Donald Duck is lost, and trying to read the Egyptian hieroglyphs in order to escape back to Duckberg. Orphan Annie and her dog, "in their bubble," happily pass by a line of long faced, skinny Okies in a growing soup kitchen line. One stamp of the Buddha, used one thousand times, never produces an identical image. Everything speaks its own language: "What we always are is a new vocabulary strangers need to learn, to be less strange, and fluency is a sign of one love or another." Goldbarth's language is incredibly original, formed around the myths and dreams of American regalia, space ships and angels. His language forces us to look again at the icons of popular culture and he redefines the symbolic representations by juxtaposing them shockingly against real life: the death of his father, a woman beaten deaf, a child seeing his parents having sex, war, and other powerfully convincing images and facts.

I loved it! Goldbarth is one contemporary poet who knows what he is doing, without wasting a word.

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It isn't everyday someone publishes a young poet who also happens to be a good poet. But Soft Skull has successfully come through with Rachel's first book, _Surviving the Moment of Impact_. The book takes you on a tour of Rachel's childhood without falling prey to the whimsical, the boring, or all that has been said before in all of those same boring phrases and stanzas. Finally the reader can open their arms to welcome the midwest we've so often heard about and truly grow to understand it and love it.

Rachel tends to post-modernism with a yard stick, marking a step beyond it with his use, or I should say non-use, of punctuation. Imagine being carried through a poem without one mark to tell you to stop or start but yet you hold perfect meter and cadence throughout. It's downright remarkable. Sure, the likes of Frank O'Hara and others made a stamp of offing punctuation, but Rachel is the first to walk you through a poem at his own pace and with such incredible images and sounds. Rachel does sometimes use punctuation, but what he really depends on, more than anything, is a love and understanding that admire as beauty in all he sees.

This poet, for obviously being so well read and well taught (a student of the recent National Book Award winner Albert Goldbarth's at Wichita State), never makes the reader feel unintelligent. When he talks of being poor, the reader neither leans to being rich or poor, we are just there, wherever Rachel would like us to be. When he is holding a journal with pink and purple writing within and a lock we could break open so easily with even a thought, I was in the backseat of that car whistling along with the radio, too.

As tempting as it is to crawl into Rachel's life, and I expect as equally easy, we walk beside the poet, perhaps perched on his shoulder eyeing the midwest as one a great horizon we'd like to one day leave too. But leave for where? He still admires his home and doesn't bestow any ill rememberances to us, just the belief that there is more fairness over the horizon and I hope he has found that now.

This book deserves incredible praise. It's reviewers, Breat Easton Ellis, Henry Flesh, Scott Heim, and Edmund White, all eloquently propel the utmost respect and thanks to Rachel for his delicious book of poems. This young poet is one poet I will keep reading for every book to come. No matter where he wanders, I don't mind going along.

I'll mostly confine myself to being oppositional. The Kirus Review appraisal of the book is silly, and I'd hate it to be the only one accompanying the book on this service. Golbarth is a very good poet. Few poets writing have his knack for producing gorgeously textured sounds out of the most improbable materials or for showing (or creating) compelling connections between seemingly disparate ideas or oddities. So, while _Beyond_ isn't Goldbarth's best book, it's far from being as slapdash or long-winded as the blurb from Kirkus would have us believe. Indeed, the poems are in the main quite well-constructed. What Kirkus calls "his pile-on sensibility" is actually a very careful and structured style that shouldn't be so easily dismissed, and the fact that the poems are energetic at the same time they're cautious about easy answers doesn't mean they're desperate. For example, "News from Home" displays many of the traits Kirkus dislikes but, though not a great poem (and far from the best in the book), is certainly an intelligent, lush take on what does and doesn't change in human life as centuries roll by. Our anonymous friend at Kirkus calls Goldbarth "[m]ore tummler, barker, and prankster than poet," and I must admit that I'm not quite sure what this means. Poetry doesn't need to be fustian, confessional, or arch to be wise and moving. I may not know what Kirkus means, but I do know that a _poet_ wrote "Two Cents," which is a lovely poem (and it's to have Goldbarth's two cents thrown into the canon debates). A poet capable of restrained meditation on family history and inequity wrote "Even; Equal." And a poet who understands suffering, longing, and love gave us "Meop." The book isn't certainly isn't crying out for an editor's pencil, though I can't necessarily say the same for all its reviewers.

Just want to second the other customer review: Goldbarth's poetry is complicated and exciting stuff. The anonymous Kirkus Reviewer must not read much poetry if s/he doesn't understand that.

... 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.

This is just the type of book that wins these types of awards. Goldbarth's poems tend to be prosey and verbose. He has some good ideas behind the poems, and a few good lines. But that isn't what we read poetry for--ideas. Where are the images that can't be forgotten? Where is the play that language does so well? This is a poet like Jorie Graham, one who tries to say something, then gets bogged down with free association. There is some good stuff in the poems, but as a whole they are a let down. The opening poem, "Library" happens to be a poem where this works, but it is a list poem, and you can get a little wordy in those. The book runs a little long for a poetry collection (over 120 pages). Goldbarth could have used a good editor cull it some.

Simply put, this is a wonderful book, a great addition to any library and a must for any reader interested in Goldbarth's work and his impact on contemporary poetry.

Albert Goldbarth proves once again that he is one of the undersung masters of American poetry.Saving Lives is easily his best poetry collection since Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology which came out nearly ten years ago. With the opening poem "Library" and through middle ground such as "Her Literal One," Goldbarth weaves a spell of love, magic, and humor. If you've never before dipped into Goldbarth's work, Saving Lives is a great place to start. Though the poet is probably best known for his longer narrative poems and his love of the planets and stars, both become muted here: these are shorter poems than what readers might be used to though their length compromises none of the typical Goldbarthian fire. And while Goldbarth hasn't abandoned his love of hard science and sci fi and all things in between, the poems in this volume stay mostly rooted on earth, focusing on what keeps the human heart beating.

This book takes some time and effort to read. The four essays span a huge range of topics but are masterfully woven together towards the end. If you are willing to be patient, reading all the essays in order will pay off. Goldbarth is simply brilliant.

From the publisher that brought us John D'Agata's Halls of Fame comes another collection of experimental essays. Unfortunately this one seems to have been put together quickly in order to rid on the coat-tails of D'Agata's much more original, daring collection. Many Circles in a collection of previously published material that merely recycles a lot of old ticks from a very tired writer. Goldbarth is known for his wonderful, quirky poetry. I'd leave the essay writing to others.

This collected essays edition of Goldbarth's work provides new readers with an oppurtunity to read a number of essays from the long out of print A Sympathy of Souls and Great Topics of the World. Perhaps what's most interesting about the collection is that one can see Goldbarth becoming more comfortable with the essay as a form, working out the differences between essays and poems over the course of the early essays (from Souls and Great Topics) before hitting his stride with the title essay. If you've read his last essay collection, Dark Waves and Light Matter, Many Circles will not dissapoint.