Sympathy Of Souls

by Albert Goldbarth

“Albert Goldbarth writes very well indeed. These are lively, brilliant, vivid, witty and informed pieces about the real world.” — Annie Dillard “ A Sympathy of Souls could be hazardous to any preconceived ideas you may have about personal essays. These are a whole new breed. Albert Goldbarth has spliced strands of the old genre with a powerful new gene— and the results are miraculous. But what I find most astonishing about Goldbarth’s writing is that for all its coils and curlicues it never loses touch with actual life and genuine emotion. He is easily one of the best new essayists writing today.” — Robert Atwan, Series Editor, The Best American Essay; ln ‘A Sympathy of Souls’, celebrated essayist and poet Albert Goldbarth brilliantly orchestrates an exciting discourse over barriers of time, place, and genre. Goldbarth splices together Jewish history, the history of physics and art, mythology, and layman’s anthropology, using a writing style that combines elements of the literary memoir, the short story, the research essay, and the prose poem. The result is a heady, expansive mix which fuses formative ideas and major contemporary and historical figures, with one man’s life. In these essays, images of the shtetl, Marie Curie’s laboratory, 1950s toy stores, and Leonardo da Vinci’s studio seamlessly merge, demonstrating that the lives and ideas of “souls in sympathy” continue to resonate one off of the other.

Genres: Essays, Memoir, Nonfiction

177 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1990

About the author

Albert Goldbarth is an American poet born January 31, 1948 in Chicago. He is known for his prolific production, his gregarious tone, his eclectic interests and his distinctive 'talky' style. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1991 and 2001, the only poet to receive the honor two times. He also won the Mark Twain Award for Humorous Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Foundation, in 2008.

Goldbarth received his BA from the University of Illinois in 1969 and his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1971. He is currently distinguished professor of Humanities at Wichita State University, and he teaches in the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Converse College.

Reviews

[Robbie Maakestad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm ceaselessly impressed with Goldbarth's ability to craft essays. Exquisite transitions between topics. Somehow brings everything together in the end.

[Kate Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

A miracle of a book. What a poet writes when a poet writes essays, to follow out a sustained idea without sacrificing any scrap of the music of words.

This is a sacred text, because it doesn't acknowledge anything as profane. All of it has to be included -- the junky toys and the drooling drug addicts and the mindless shows on TV, they're all right up there with the holy of holies.

When Goldbarth writes about his father, about the impossible subject of loving a father, in spite of it all, he tells a story about him. And then he says:

"Now thirty years dwindles that anecdote. Too much love is in the way, and too much piddlyshit. Three decades of newspaper headlines intervene, and the divorce papers. Some of what’s happened -- it’s not worth wiping your ass with. Other moments, maybe even so small as a wooden coffee stirrer someone’s gentleness gives dignity to in a diner off I-35 -- well, it pulls the breath from you like a magician’s scarf. And then one day you’re visiting your mother’s, shuffling through his . . . what do they call it? . . . his effects. And what are you doing now, a shovel in your grip, working down to the bedrock?"

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

These sometimes discursive essays are smart and beautiful. Prose poems, really.

[Emily Bonden · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorite essay collections. If you love science and passion and people this book will knock your socks off.