George Bilgere
poetry & readings
April Is National Poetry Month
Here’s a poem for April 19, 2024
After my mother left him
and it was my father’s turn to have me
over the weekend, we usually wound up
at the movies, monster flicks and Japanese sci-fi,
because anything was better
than sitting in his downtown hotel room
with its chair and bed and Jim Beam.
His great bulk rested beside me
as Reptilicus, or the Beast
from Twenty Thousand Fathoms
collided titanically on the screen and died.
He watched as aliens came to our planet
with their giant robots and death rays,
destroying our armies, stealing our women,
our beautiful young women, bearing them off
to new, unimaginable lives.
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