Mom & Dad

In most cases of picking up a book of poems for the first time, my own experience at least has shown that some of the poems in that book are going to impress, some stir feelings to an unexpected level and a few of them leave me unmoved and perhaps quick to turn the page. More than most other genres, poetry is a dicey realm threaded with quicksand on the one hand and thorny barriers on the other, and while it surely isn’t meant to be that way, some poets have a knack for leading us around the complications and taking us to those unexpected levels. George Bilgere is one of them.

   

George Bilgere has published five collections of poetry. His most recent, The White Museum was awarded the 2009 Autumn House Poetry Prize, while his third book, The Good Kiss won the University of Akron Poetry Award in 2002. Bilgere’s work has garnered numerous other awards, including the Midland Authors Award, a Pushcart Prize and the May Swenson Poetry Award for his 2006 collection Haywire. His work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, the Best American Poetry series and frequently on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac. The poet is a resident of Cleveland, Ohio where he teaches at John Carroll University.

Bilgere has a special genius for shaping eloquent lines from everyday moments that seem small yet resound with near frightening significance. The two poems below are from his third collection, The Good Kiss. Each in turn is a wistful yet tinged with pain memory of parents, reminding us that life is not always a scene from Father Knows Best or Ozzie and Harriet.

LIKE RIDING A BICYCLE

I would like to write a poem
About how my father taught me
To ride a bicycle one soft twilight,
A poem in which he was tired
And I was scared, unable to disbelieve
In gravity and believe in him,
As the fireflies were coming out
And only enough light remained
For one more run, his big hand at the small
Of my back, pulling away like the gantry
At a missile launch, and this time, this time
I wobbled into flight, caught a balance
I would never lose, and pulled away
From him as he eased, laughing, to a stop,
A poem in which I said that even today
As I make some perilous adult launch,
Like pulling away from my wife
Into the fragile new balance of our life
Apart, I can still feel that steadying hand,
Still hear that strong voice telling me
To embrace the sweet fall forward
Into the future’s blue
Equilibrium. But,

Of course, he was drunk that night,
Still wearing his white shirt
And tie from the office, the air around us
Sick with scotch, and the challenge
Was keeping his own balance
As he coaxed his bulk into a trot
Beside me in the hot night, sweat
Soaking his armpits, the eternal flame
Of his cigarette flaring as he gasped
And I fell, again and again, entangled
In my gleaming Schwinn, until
He swore and stomped off
Into the house to continue
Working with my mother
On their own divorce, their balance
Long gone and the hard ground already
Rising up to smite them
While I stayed outside in the dark,
Still falling, until at last I wobbled
Into the frail, upright delight
Of feeling sorry for myself, riding
Alone down the neighborhood’s
Black street like the lonely western hero
I still catch myself in the act
Of performing.

And yet, having said all this,
I must also say that this summer evening
Is very beautiful, and I am older
Than my father ever was
As I coast the Pacific shoreline
On my old bike, the gears clicking
Like years, the wind
Touching me for the first time, it seems,
In a very long time,
With soft urgency all over.

CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE

I can see her in the kitchen,
Cooking up, for the hundredth time,
A little something from her
Limited Midwestern repertoire.
Cigarette going in the ashtray,
The red wine pulsing in its glass,
A warning light meaning
Everything was simmering
Just below the steel lid
Of her smile, as she boiled
The beef into submission,
Chopped her way
Through the vegetable kingdom
With the broken-handled knife
I use tonight, feeling her
Anger rising from the dark
Chambers of the head
Of cabbage I slice through,
Missing her, wanting
To chew things over
With my mother again.

A Year Ago

Got to wondering this morning what I was doing on this day last year, and what the weather was like. So, I pulled out some journal notes from a year ago and enjoyed a little retrospection. Looking back, I can hardly call February 15, 2009 a red-letter day, or in any way noteworthy, but in small ways it did have its moments.

It was warmer and almost springlike on the 15th last year, enough so to make a walk over to the small used bookstore in neighboring Mitakadai a pleasant stretch. Managed to stay warm in only a sweater and jeans. I stumbled upon a surprise find in the bookstore, lucky to snap up an old copy of French Trademarks: The Art Deco Era. The picture here is from that book, a scanned image of an ad for rum used in Nice, France in 1931. Rum was first imported from the Caribbean, and this ad is of a native woman posed in front of tropical banana leaves. Blacks were a very popular image in European advertising of the 1920s and 30s, and there are a dozen or more beautiful designs in this book using stylized black figures. Most of them are minstrel or Sambo-like depictions, which in that era wasn’t viewed as derogatory.

This time last year I was reading Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a book I sometimes referred to as ‘The Frozen Chosen.’ Why this odd nickname? The premise of the book is FDR’s unrealized idea to offer European Jews a homeland in Alaska. Chabon wrote his book along the lines of ‘what if…?’ How fluid and effortless his writing seems. Here is a short and ‘snappy’ quote, a father and son exchange: “Don’t take that tone with me, John Bear,” the old man snaps. “I don’t care for it.” “Tone?” Berko says, his voice stacked like a measure of musical score with a half dozen tones, a chamber ensemble of insolence, resentment, sarcasm, provocation, innocence and surprise. “Tone?” Chabon is quite the versatile writer with screenplays, children’s books, comics and newspaper serials to his credit. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is probably my favorite book of 2001.

Coming home from the walk, I stopped in Doutor for a late lunch. Distracted by the art deco book, I put my arm down on top of a hot dog slathered with mustard. Lucky I was wearing an old cotton sweater from Eddie Bauer I bought years ago. Luckier still the mustard didn’t reach the pages of my new book.

One more highlight of this day last year was the discovery of another great poem by one of my favorites, George Bilgere. The poem is what I call a dead center bulls-eye of social commentary.

“The Bridal Shower”

Perhaps, in a distant café,

four or five people are talking

with the four or five people

who are chatting on their cell phones this morning

in my favorite café.

And perhaps someone there,

someone like me, is watching them as they frown,

or smile, or shrug

at their invisible friends or lovers,

jabbing the air for emphasis.

And, like me, he misses the old days,

when talking to yourself

meant you were crazy,

back when being crazy was a big deal,

not just an acronym

or something you could take a pill for.

I liked it

when people who were talking to themselves

might actually have been talking to God

or an angel.

You respected people like that.

You didn’t want to kill them,

as I want to kill the woman at the next table

with the little blue light on her ear

who has been telling the emptiness in front of her

about her daughter’s bridal shower

in astonishing detail

for the past thirty minutes.

O person like me,

phoneless in your distant café,

I wish we could meet to discuss this,

and perhaps you would help me

murder this woman on her cell phone,

after which we could have a cup of coffee,

maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,

face to face.