George Bilgere
poetry & readings
April Is National Poetry Month
Here’s a poem for April 24, 2024
The summer we rented the cottage in the woods
we would waken in the middle of the night
to the mating call of the foxes,
which sounds like one of my freshmen
barfing up hot dogs and Wild Turkey
after his first frat party, a sound
that makes you want to puke yourself
out of sympathy or sheer disgust
with the whole situation,
how the imperatives of desire
drive us into the dark woods,
sick with the incandescent
loneliness of the flesh.
However, after listening for a while,
my wife remarked
that it was actually kind of funny,
as if nature, usually so careful
about beauty, about getting it just right,
had for once screwed up,
and created something even
Mary Oliver couldn’t get behind.
And then she said,
well, since we’re up anyway,
and there’s nothing else to do …
Which is why my wife
is my wife.
from Central Air
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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