Big Bang

by George Bilgere

Poetry. What is most wonderful about this enormously impressive collection of poems of George Bilgere is the sustained excellence of poem after poem, with never a false note. The reader's expectations are quickly raised high, and never disappointed. This alone would make the book remarkable, but its riches are of many kinds. In its fine evocations of American settings, its vivid portraits of vanished lives, human and non-human, its celebratory delight in language brilliantly deployed, it seems to me a landmark -- Anthony Hecht. George Bilgere won the Devins Award for his first collection, THE GOING, and his work has appeared in many magazines, from Poetry and Field to Shenandoah and The Sewanee Review.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Billy Collins once commented that poet George Bilgere "has shown that imaginative wonders and deep emotional truths can be achieved with plain, colloquial American speech." Bilgere has done so in his six collections of poetry, most recently "Imperial" (Pitt Poetry Series). His numerous awards include the May Swenson Poetry Award and a Pushcart Prize. A professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, he is also host of the public radio program WORDPLAY, an offbeat mix of poetry and comedy.

Reviews

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection of poetry by George Bilgere, to whom I believe I was introduced through Garrison Keillor's Good Poems.

Bilgere has a distinctly modern voice, and his poems - while loaded with rich, sensual imagery - are very approachable, because the subject matter is relatable: musings while dining at a Mexican Restaurant, finding a forgotten bra at a laundromat or, one of my favorites, "Solstice," about Sears employees.

Here is a sample from "Buying a Touchtone" that illustrates the type of imagery that runs throughout Bilgere's work:

...
And in the last days of her cancer,
when her body had begun to implode
like a pumpkin sagging at the center,
her voice never hollowed out with fear
but carried across the country, strong
and cynical as ever in my ear ...

There are so many excellent poems in Big Bang, but here is one of my favorites in its entirety:

Coda

They come in waves,
the flat boxes of Brahms,
Mozart, Delius, Stravinsky,
everything from Bartok
to Ralph Vaughan Williams
arriving every day
as my aunt jettisons
vinyl -- Going CD,
she says, but mostly
getting old, the packed
honeycomb of her apartment
turning light and empty
as a seashell that holds
the sea's absence,
as spare as the few
Gregorian chants
she's held on to.

When the time comes
I'll find she's left
a space both tidy
and bone-dry, everything
boxed and dated, her old
letters and photographs
named and sorted like specimens
in her clinical hand.
The closets and drawers
where she kept the life
she never showed me
will be empty
as wave-scoured beaches.

Meanwhile
I let the needle
settle in its easy groove,
sliding down the dark
whirlpool of music
toward that spindled silence
in the center,
where nothing moves.

[Emmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally! I've been searching for a new poet who wrote with a certain passion, and a strong but gentle handle of language. George Bilgere writes the poetry I have been wanting so badly; his writing is both beautiful and ornate, yet still accessable. A must-read author for poetry lovers.