From Library Journal
Vanished youth and awkward sexual awakenings are the burden of these evocative snapshots of life in the "dark extinguished villages" and wheat fields of Kansas and Missouri. Bilgere feels betrayed by the sacrifice of innocence "in the sad museums/of other lives, blind/to enormous histories" but is too scrupulous to acknowledge it. His "hard ironic eye" instead searches for atonement amid rituals of suburban families. Hunting, watching HBO, selling cars, playing Scrabble, and sex are viewed with the same "fixed,/uncanny intensity." This is a family album of doomed people in "places unpierced by starlight,/Halls of black marrow/where the stampede begins," and Bilgere's incisive poetic gift can find little to transmute. There is no "ceremony of harvest" for "rising young men/and New Deal farmers" stumbling about in a "sun-boiled" American heartland. For Bilgere and for the people of The Going, poetry "descends at odd moments capricious as a god." Winner of the 1994 Devins Award for Poetry; for comprehensive poetry collections.
Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
6 O'clock
After Dickinson's The Lightning Is A Yellow Fork
Alert
Anointing
Another Anniversary
August
Battle: The Going
Belle Plaine
Bennett's Star
Breaststroke
Childhood
Coming To Earth
Convalescence
The Dealer
Edison Films An Execution
Exiles
Family Album
Hbo
Healing
Intersection
The Last Snapshot
Major Bennett
My Mother's Feet
Nocturne
Nova: 1
Nova: 11
Nova: 111
Nova: 1v
Nova: V
Open House
Physical Education
A Postcard
Potato Digging
Sabbath
See The Two-headed Cow
Snapshot, 1934
Stampede
Sunday Night
The Taxidermist's Wife
Terrapin
A Visiting Professor
Wanton Boys
Windmill
Zones Of Embarkation
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
After Dickinson's The Lightning Is A Yellow Fork
Alert
Anointing
Another Anniversary
August
Battle: The Going
Belle Plaine
Bennett's Star
Breaststroke
Childhood
Coming To Earth
Convalescence
The Dealer
Edison Films An Execution
Exiles
Family Album
Hbo
Healing
Intersection
The Last Snapshot
Major Bennett
My Mother's Feet
Nocturne
Nova: 1
Nova: 11
Nova: 111
Nova: 1v
Nova: V
Open House
Physical Education
A Postcard
Potato Digging
Sabbath
See The Two-headed Cow
Snapshot, 1934
Stampede
Sunday Night
The Taxidermist's Wife
Terrapin
A Visiting Professor
Wanton Boys
Windmill
Zones Of Embarkation
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
