num_pages: 136
description: Troubled Lovers in History  demonstrates an exhilarating from the briefest of lyrics to rich and multipartite narrative adventures in exotic realms; from a comic monologue spoken in immigrant “Yinglish” to a soulful elegy set in San Antonio’s Pearl Beer brewery plant; from Martian invaders, through polar explorers, to all of us busy inflicting “words with edges” on those we love. Goldbarth sets his unflinching study of individual hope and grief against the backdrop of the travels of Marco Polo; Bertha and Wilhelm Rontgen’s discovery of X-rays; an 1800 battle “twixt Dragon Sam, the great Exhaler of Gouts of Amazing Flame . . . and Liquid Dan, the Living Geyser.” From the night stars to the little starring parts we all play every day,  Troubled Lovers in History  takes us into the text of our dreams and despairs, as witnessed by the writer whom Joyce Carol Oates called “a poet of remarkable gifts—a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart.”
language: English
title: Troubled Lovers in History: A Sequence of Poems
titlecomplete: Troubled Lovers in History: A Sequence of Poems (Polymer Science and Engineering)
genres: Poetry
ratings_count: 19
publisher: Ohio State University Press