Poetry Reading with George Bilgere
Saturday, April 27, 4 - 6 PM
We are pleased to announce that award-winning poet George Bilgere will be at the library reading from his latest work on Saturday, April 27, 4 - 6 pm. The program, which is in honor of National Poetry Month, includes a reception and book signing. He will be teaching a workshop for working poets earlier in the day.
Bilgere has published six collections of poetry, including
Imperial (2014); T
he White Museum (2010), which was awarded the Autumn House Poetry Prize;
Haywire (2006), which on the May Swenson Poetry Award; and
The Good Kiss (2002), which was selected by Billy Collins to win the University of Akron Poetry Award. He has won numerous awards, including the Midland Authors Award and a Pushcart Prize. Bilgere has received grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, and the Ohio Arts Council.
Bilgere's poetry, while residing firmly in the every-day world of janitors, college students or siblings, is noted for its controlled poignancy and limpid free-verse line. Billy Collins has described him as “a welcome breath of fresh American air.” His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, Fulcrum, and the Best American Poetry series. His poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" and Ted Kooser's newspaper project "American Life in Poetry." He has also been a guest on Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion.”
Bilgere also hosts his own weekly radio show, WORDPLAY, an offbeat mix of poetry, comedy, and an ongoing exploration of the possibilities of the spoken word. He teaches literature at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. His poems have been called “kind, big-hearted, full of love,” and “dangerously clever.”
At the Vietnam Memorial
BY GEORGE BILGERE
The last time I saw Paul Castle
it was printed in gold on the wall
above the showers in the boys’
locker room, next to the school
record for the mile. I don’t recall
his time, but the year was 1968
and I can look across the infield
of memory to see him on the track,
legs flashing, body bending slightly
beyond the pack of runners at his back.
He couldn’t spare a word for me,
two years younger, junior varsity,
and hardly worth the waste of breath.
He owned the hallways, a cool blonde
at his side, and aimed his interests
further down the line than we could guess.
Now, reading the name again,
I see us standing in the showers,
naked kids beneath his larger,
comprehensive force—the ones who trail
obscurely, in the wake of the swift,
like my shadow on this gleaming wall.
