Selfish : Poems

"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.

“Albert Goldbarth has amassed a body of work as substantial and intelligent as that of anyone in his generation.” —Harvard Review

“Albert Goldbarth just may be the American poet of his generation for the ages.”—The Georgia Review

“Albert Goldbarth is a major poet: brilliant, moving, and wildly entertaining. . . . [His poems] are also among the most generous poems written today, the most worthy of attention and pleasurable.”—Pleiades

“Compulsively readable. . . . The poems and language in Selfish are exuberant, overflowing with vim and wit.”—Southern Humanities Review