Goldberg's Mandelstam, Blok and the Boundaries of Mythopoetic Symbolism (The Ohio State University Press, 2011,) explores the ongoing role that the poetry of Russian Symbolism played in Osip Mandelstam’s creative life.

Mandelstam (1891–1938) was an instigator of Russia's "revolution of the word." He was exiled under Stalin and died in a Gulag. He is considered a luminary of both Russian poetry of the twentieth century and world poetry. 

Goldberg illuminates the poet’s productive play with distance and immediacy in his assimilation of the Symbolist heritage.  In announcing the selection of Goldberg's book, Choice noted, "The greatest value of this book lies in Goldberg’s intelligent, perceptive, and enlightening interpretations of individual poems, not only as they fit into Mandel’shtam’s oeuvre but also as they relate to ‘early’ symbolists.”