White Museum

by George Bilgere

Bilgere has published six collections of poetry. His fifth collection "The White Museum" uses humor and thoughtfulness to portray modern American life and language.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

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

[Ken]

Count me a convert. I actually liked this better than Haywire (also 4-starred), but I held back on the 5 because it didn't wow me wall to wall. Still, there are some wowser poems in this collection by looks-easy-but-isn't George. For starters, there's the lovely "Bridal Shower," a heat-seeking missile that blows away public cellphone use:


Perhaps, in a distant café,
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite café.

And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.

And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.

I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.

You didn't want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter's bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.

O person like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,

after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.

Even better is the title piece, the beautiful "White Museum." If you suspect it is about a real museum, the surprise is all the sweeter:


My aunt was an organ donor
and so, the day she died,
her organs were harvested
for medical science.
I suppose there must be people
who list, under "Occupation,"
"Organ Harvester," people for whom
it is always harvest season,
each death bringing its bounty.
They spend their days
loading wagonloads of kidneys,
whole cornucopias of corneas,
burlap sacks groaning with hearts and lungs
and the pale green sprouts of gall bladders,
and even, from time to time,
the weighty cauliflower of a brain.

And perhaps today,
as I sit in this café, watching the snow
and thinking about my aunt,
a young medical student somewhere
is moving through the white museum
of her brain, making his way slowly
from one great room to the next.
Here is the gallery of her girlhood,
with that great canvas depicting her father
holding her on his lap in the backyard
of their bungalow in St. Louis.
And here is a sketch of her
the summer after her mother died,
walking down a street in Berlin
when the broken city was itself
a museum. And here
is a small, vivid oil of the two of us
sitting in a café in London
arguing over the work of Constable
or Turner, or Francis Bacon
after a visit to the Tate.

I want you to know, as you sit there
with your microscope and your slides,
there's no need to be reverent before these images.
That's the last thing she would have wanted.
But do be respectful. Speak quietly.
No flash photography. Tell your friends
you saw something beautiful.

Curious about George but have a leaning tower of Pisa TBR pile? You can enjoy a lot of his stuff for free on the The Writer's Almanac web site. Apparently Garrison Keillor is a fan, too:

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org...

Bottom line: 4.5 stars. If you're going to spring on a Bilgere collection, start here.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

In talking with the friends who recommended both The White Museum and Haywire, we agreed that Bilgere writes the kinds of poems that people who don't read poetry should read (people with whom I can certainly identify). His isn't the super-cerebral stuff that not only gives poetry a bad name with the general public, but gives me a headache. Instead, Bilgere's writing feels familiar, lived-in and honest, often with a marked vulnerability. He captures both the unique and universal stuff of life with humor, heart, and a plainspokenness that makes this kind of craft look deceptively easy.

[Nina]

Love Bilgere's work. He is truly the people's poet

[Carolyn Crocker · Rating 3 out of 5]

The American vernacular shines in these wry reflections on middle age in our society--a knowing smile, a twinge of regret, sadder wisdom, a spark of humor.
Joy by George Bilgere
Today I sit on the sun porch
with my body, just the two of us
for a change, the flu
having left me for someone else.

I’m thinking about how good it is
to have been sick. to have been turned
inside out. Until we are sick, says Keats
we understand not. And for four or five days
I understood. Fully and completely.
There was no ambiguity,
no misunderstandings of any sort whatsoever.

For awhile I thought I’d never get better.
I’d be that sick eagle, staring at the sky
on a permanent basis. But
We’re living in the age of miracles;
another jetliner smacked into New York,
only this time nobody got hurt. A black guy
thoroughly fumigated the White House.

And this morning I woke up
feeling like a little French village
the Nazis suddenly decided to pull out of
after a particularly cruel occupation.

The baker has come back to his stove
and everything smells like warm baguettes,
the children are playing in the schoolyard,
the piano bars along the river
have thrown open their doors.

And here you are, with coffee
and an open blouse, and two cool breasts,
from the land of joy.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to believe that Bilgere is an academic. He doesn't write the claptrap that most academics seem to come up with. His are very human poems, easy to read and to understand.

This is my first book by this poet. I read a poem of his in a magazine and promptly ordered one of his books. I will buy more. I like his unpretentious style. More poets should write like this, evocative and meaningful, instead of filled with associations only known to the author, purposely obtuse and obfuscated.

Thanks for being refreshing, George!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many Americans, my poetry tolerance level was systematically lowered through years of oppressively melancholic young adult self-pitying ballads, dictated academic analysis of ancient runes, and a general belief that the antiquated art form offered little relevancy to my life. What a surprise to find two poets in one year who shook all that I fundamentally believed about poetry to it's core. Like Poet Laureate Billy Collins, the first of these two game changers to enter my life, George Bilgere speaks with a clear, modern voice. You won't need to visit your high school English teacher to understand the accessible, but brilliant word play and symbolism employed. Bilgere's poems are funny, self-deprecating, painfully and bravely honest, and expressive of a larger cultural view point through an intensely personal experience. The razor wit and humor throughout this collection helps temper the sometimes unbearably truthful observations and create an overall experience that is deeply human.

[Emmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I find an author I particularly like, it is very difficult to say anything bad about them. And I do love the poetry of George Bilgere. However, I found this collection to be a bit lackluster in comparison to other books of his that I have read. Not a bad collection by any stretch of the imagination. Most enjoyable and a lot of fun, but not nearly as good as Big Bang. Still, Bilgere remains one of my favorite poets.

UPDATE: 2/14/2025
Maybe I'm feeling particularly lovely because it's Valentine's Day, but this is the third Bilgere book review that I've changed my rating from a 3 to a 4--all in one day, no less!

[Candace Haskell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy George Bilgere and how he nails certain truths about male mid life, language and art.

For the pleasures of language, I love "Owl": "I just wanted an excuse to say owl/which, as you know, happens to be/among the top five or ten words/in the English language. Owl./" He's right - it is such a pleasurable word to say that you do want to say it, and say it outdoors, and roll your mouth around it before letting it out. But the man put that in a poem and captured something I wouldn't have thought myself to express.
Lovely.

[Lenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book of poetry. An American voice. Funny. My favorite is when he invents a Vermeer painting called Woman with Pregnant Cat and writes about it. Bilgere has become one of my favorite poets.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Bilgere is a poet who holds the mirror to my face--me being a white female of a certain generation who has experienced relative privilege. He gives us much to chuckle about as well as to ponder.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked Blank, Muscle, The First Breast, Taking Out the Trash.

[Antonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've just reread this book, first read in 2011, and liked it just as much. I need to read some of Bilgere's more recent books.

[Joshua Gage · Rating 2 out of 5]

While a few of the poems in this collection were moving, and had resonance and depth, most of them were surface-level musings.

[Katherine Dering · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyable. Bilgere's usual wry observations about middle class life. I attended a reading and the audience was in stitches half the time.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent poems, a few quite hilariously funny, but .not as good a collection as some of his others.

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Bilgere's poetry is absolutely stunning.

[Merry Bilgere · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect.