Sympathy of Souls Book

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?"