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Slouching Towards the Light: New Poems 2017-2023
131 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2024
About the author
Michael Bourgo
20 books3 followersMichael Bourgo started out to be a history teacher but ended up spending 34 years at IBM in sales and customer service. He began writing as a casual hobby some thirty years ago, but since retirement it has become a vocation that he pursues on a daily basis.
He divides his poetry into two broad categories: spontaneous and planned. "Spontaneous" poems are the ones that you will find in his first two collections, "Moments Past and Present" and "More Moments." These are mostly traditional lyric poems, centered on daily life, family, nature, and beliefs, arising from the thoughts and observations of every day.
His "planned" verse appears in several recent books. "Towards a More Perfect Union" is a set of 51 rhymed poems in a set format that profile each of the states and the District of Columbia. "The Grand Tour" describes each of the 50 capital cities of Europe in similar fashion. A third collection "Hail to the Chief" is a portrait of our Presidents. Although Michael has no plans to give up serious reflective poetry, he enjoyed the very different challenges of writing light verse in rhyme and in a fixed format. "A to Z Animal Antics" is in the same vein, but for children.
His other volume of verse, "The Years," is a set of 24 long poems on notable characters and events in the 19th century. It's a marriage of two lifelong interests-- poetry and history. A sequel on the twentieth century, "Modern Times, " came out in 2020.
In 2019 he was asked to assist with a translation of Bulgarian poet Pavlina Michailova. Over time he wrote a series of companion poems for her verse and the result was a collaboration entitled "From Season to Season."
"Once Upon a Time" is his first venture in prose. It is a memoir of his life from age 3 to 14, and one which began as a series of memory poems he wrote some years ago.
Michael is an active member of the writing community in State College PA. He has received commissions from the Penn State Center for the Book, leads two local writing groups and teaches for the Penn State extension program. He has won first place in the Grand Prize contest of the Pennsylvania state poetry three times, was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his verse has appeared in a number of publications. You can see samples of his work at http://theseasonsandotherpoems.blogsp...
He divides his poetry into two broad categories: spontaneous and planned. "Spontaneous" poems are the ones that you will find in his first two collections, "Moments Past and Present" and "More Moments." These are mostly traditional lyric poems, centered on daily life, family, nature, and beliefs, arising from the thoughts and observations of every day.
His "planned" verse appears in several recent books. "Towards a More Perfect Union" is a set of 51 rhymed poems in a set format that profile each of the states and the District of Columbia. "The Grand Tour" describes each of the 50 capital cities of Europe in similar fashion. A third collection "Hail to the Chief" is a portrait of our Presidents. Although Michael has no plans to give up serious reflective poetry, he enjoyed the very different challenges of writing light verse in rhyme and in a fixed format. "A to Z Animal Antics" is in the same vein, but for children.
His other volume of verse, "The Years," is a set of 24 long poems on notable characters and events in the 19th century. It's a marriage of two lifelong interests-- poetry and history. A sequel on the twentieth century, "Modern Times, " came out in 2020.
In 2019 he was asked to assist with a translation of Bulgarian poet Pavlina Michailova. Over time he wrote a series of companion poems for her verse and the result was a collaboration entitled "From Season to Season."
"Once Upon a Time" is his first venture in prose. It is a memoir of his life from age 3 to 14, and one which began as a series of memory poems he wrote some years ago.
Michael is an active member of the writing community in State College PA. He has received commissions from the Penn State Center for the Book, leads two local writing groups and teaches for the Penn State extension program. He has won first place in the Grand Prize contest of the Pennsylvania state poetry three times, was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his verse has appeared in a number of publications. You can see samples of his work at http://theseasonsandotherpoems.blogsp...
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