Space Traveler

In Ben Grossberg's third collection, he forges a new mythology, fresh and contemporary in voice and content, as he examines how we live today, seen through the eyes of another being. Playful, insightful, wide in their arc of associations, the poems of Space Traveler are spoken by an alien traveling from star to star, getting a chance to observe up close the variety of outer-space phenomena. Along the way, the traveler contemplates the range of subjects that humans encounter—desire, aging, love, and separation—often addressing us, humanity, directly. Sometimes exultant, sometimes bereft, the Space Traveler always reveals implicit parallels of language and image between his experience traveling alone through space, and our lives in a contemporary world and a contemporary America. Despite its contemporary observations, the Space Traveler is the natural heir to ancient Odysseus and his fellow seafarers. He, too, navigates a magical landscape in a long search for home.