George Bilgere
poetry & readings
April Is National Poetry Month
Here’s a poem for April 27, 2024
Another subway station blows up in Europe,
it’s right there on the front page,
and I’m about to pour some syrup on my pancakes.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be doing this.
Maybe I should just put the syrup down
out of respect for the victims and their families.
Yet who is there to witness my sacrifice,
my gesture of solidarity, however small,
with the international community?
My wife is playing with our son in the living room.
I’m at the table by myself and I could just go ahead
and pour the syrup and smear on some butter
and think compassionately about the victims
while eating the pancakes while they’re hot.
No one will benefit from my eating cold pancakes.
Instead, I call out to my wife from the dining room,
“Another subway station blew up in Europe,
they think it’s terrorists,” but she doesn’t hear me,
the TV’s turned up for Paw Patrol.
So I just sit here quietly for a moment,
then start eating the pancakes,
trying not to enjoy them too much.
from Blood Pages
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“A welcome breath of fresh, American air.” —Billy Collins
“There’s nothing George doesn’t take to heart, whether it’s a boy watching his father drink himself to death in a hotel room or a grown man who watches his family at play and marvels at the lucky breaks that have led him to this quiet happiness. Nobody captures the sorrows and beauties of this world better.”
—David Kirby, author of More Than This: Poems
“Cheeky nephew of Billy Collins, brash blunt brother of Tony Hoagland, George Bilgere writes the poetry of frontal candor about desire, nostalgia, and sweet sad vanity. The rest of us professor poetry guys maybe better give up writing funny-ruefully about our typical lucky lives, because Bilgere has the territory so well-covered.”
—Mark Halliday, author of Thresherphobe
“George Bilgere is an absolute whiz at the twists and turns of the glorious American language, the flexible American syntax, as spoken by everybody up and down the great chain of Americanness in our bewitched century. Oh what a pleasure to watch him spin those sentences.”
—Alicia Ostriker, author of Waiting for the Light