In the dog days of Portland's late 2011 summer, we were sitting around the table with poet and Tavern Books ally Matthew Dickman talking about possible future titles for the Tavern Books catalog, Oregon beer, the poems of Adrian C. Louis, and the end of NASA's Shuttle Program. For a bunch of Cold War kids, the end of the Shuttle Program was and is virtually unthinkable, at best. Yet, it is no more. Eventually, talk turned to Albert Goldbarth, veritable collector of 20th century space ephemera, poet, and staunch advocate of all things analog. Why don't we ask Goldbarth to write a chapbook-length piece on the end of the Shuttle Program, someone said. Yeah, you could call it, The End of Space, Dickman chimed. And so, a few months later, we contacted Albert Goldbarth by carrier pigeon and asked if he'd be interested to write a piece, be it prose or poetry, on the end of the Shuttle Program. To our delight, he responded with a resounding "Yes!" So, there you have it. We're currently laying out The End of Space, and is it a beauty! By turns deadly serious, flippant, funny, and heartbreaking, Goldbarth's forthcoming Tavern title is an absolute masterpiece. The book is made up of 10 linked lyrical prose vignettes. Could we be happier?! No way. Stay tuned, space fans, The End of Space in nigh...
Cheers
