Citizens of Ordinary Time
by Benjamin Goluboff, Mark Luebbers
In this collaborative poetic endeavour, Benjamin Goluboff (Ho Chi Minh: A Speculative Life in Verse) and Mark Luebbers (Flat Light) project the lives of eclectic and memorable people through speculative biography. Renowned in their use of this poetic style, here we see the likes Robert Frank, Bill Evans, Gerda Taro, Robert Capa, and others in imagined glimmers from their lives. In unique work that follows in the line of Spoon River Anthology, we are invited along for poetic experience that couples historical fact with deep-dive lyric experience. These are poems of experience, ones that let readers feel and hear and witness history in a way that makes it very real, almost personal, and leaves a lasting memory and lingering feelings.
Paperback
Brand New
Author Biography
Benjamin Goluboff teaches at Lake Forest College. In addition to some scholarly publications, he has placed imaginative writing - poetry, fiction, and essays - in many small-press journals, recently Unbroken, Cordite Poetry Review, and War Literature and the Arts. He is the author of Ho Chi Minh: A Speculative Life in Verse (Urban Farmhouse Press 2017). Mark Luebbers has been an English teacher and administrator at several schools in the Northeast and Midwest. He now lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts. His poems have been included in recent issues of The American Journal of Poetry, Apple Valley Review, Blue Line, The Hopper, Salt Front, The Wayfarer Magazine, and Wilderness House Review. His collection Flat Light was published by Urban Farmhouse Press in 2020.
Review
Engaging and eclectic, Citizens of Ordinary Time is a work of speculative biographical poetry: partly historical, partly imaginative, it's a collection that renders an array of lives dedicated, in almost every instance, to art. Luebbers and Goluboff bring together a collage that ironically redefines and properly expands the word "ordinary".
- Ken Holland, Winner of the 2022 New Ohio Review Poetry Contest
The historical figures given voice and visibility in this wholly original book have in common what once was politely described as eccentricity, and through their variety, the voices bound to their time speak to our own fractured present. This book, in rich tribute to its artistic roots, is collaborative, unpredictable, sad, wry, and refreshing. It is also beautiful.
- Maurice Manning, Author of The Common Man, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, Railsplitter, and other books
Incandescent poetry portraits of nine remarkable creative personalities. Superbly crafted, and, at times, astounding.
- Michael Favala Goldman, Author of Slow Phoenix, Small Sovereign, This May Sound Familiar, and other books of poetry and translation
Citizens of Ordinary Time is no Tilbury Town nor Spoon River, but instead it is a virtual village of striking portraits. Exploring much of the world and much of the arts, these figures display a formidable range of inventiveness, beauty, courage both artistic and physical, passions, genius, and sheer energy.
- Reginald Gibbons, Author of Last Lake, Creatures of a Day, the novel Sweetbitter, and other books of poetry and translation.
Details
