For Valerie: Novels and Utah on her Birthday

For Valerie, who took me to Utah and encouraged me to avoid this fate with The Hunger Games. I thank her for being so wonderful, for sharing so much with me, and wish her a very wonderful 26th birthday.

 

Once Again I Fail to Read an Important Novel 

Instead, we sit together beside the fountain,

the important novel and I.

We are having coffee together 

in that quiet first hour of the morning,

respecting each other's silences

in the shadow of an important old building

in this small but significant European city.

All the characters can relax.

I'm giving them the day off.

For once they can forget about their problems—

desire, betrayal, the fatal denouement—

and just sit peacefully beside me.

In the afternoon,

at lunch near the cathedral,

and in the evening, after my lonely, 

historical walk along the promenade,

the men and women, the children

and even the dogs

in the important, complicated novel

have nothing to fear from me.

We will sit quietly at the table

with a glass of cool red wine

and listen to the pigeons 

questioning each other in the ancient corridors.

by George Bilgere

From Haywire. © Utah State University Press

Courtesy The Writer’s Almanac

Yes, There's an App for That

For those of you with an iPhone, consider Poem Flow, the poetry app.  It also works on the iPod Touch.


It — well, let me have the Academy of American Poets do the honors:

A veritable box of light with words and thought in fluid motion, Poem Flow is an entirely new way to experience poetry on a handheld screen. In Portrait view, each poem is presented in its traditional format; turned to Landscape, the poem literally flows over the screen.

Each day, a new poem becomes available to app subscribers, while those from previous days remain on the device, building the equivalent of an ever-expanding anthology of the best-loved poems in the English language. Historical trivia and contextual information, compiled by Poets.org, are provided for each daily poem.

Now I have to go get an iPhone — but first, this poem.

iPoem

Someone's taken a bite
from my laptop's glowing apple,
the damaged fruit of our disobedience,
of which we must constantly be reminded.

There's the fatal crescent,
the dark smile
of Eve, who never dreamed of a laptop,
who, in fact, didn't even have clothes,
or anything else for that matter,

which was probably the nicest thing
about the Garden, I'm thinking,
as I sit here in the café
with my expensive computer,
afraid to get up even for a minute
in order to go to the bathroom
because someone might steal it

in this fallen world she invented
with a single bite
of an apple nobody, and I mean
nobody,
was going to tell her not to eat.

by George Bilgere

courtesy The Writer's Almanac 

It Happens to the Best of Us

Once Again I Fail to Read an Important Novel

Instead, we sit together beside the fountain,
the important novel and I.

We are having coffee together
in that quiet first hour of the morning,
respecting each other's silences
in the shadow of an important old building
in this small but significant European city.

All the characters can relax.
I'm giving them the day off.
For once they can forget about their problems—
desire, betrayal, the fatal denouement—
and just sit peacefully beside me.

In the afternoon,
at lunch near the cathedral,
and in the evening, after my lonely,
historical walk along the promenade,

the men and women, the children
and even the dogs
in the important, complicated novel
have nothing to fear from me.

We will sit quietly at the table
with a glass of cool red wine
and listen to the pigeons
questioning each other in the ancient corridors.


by George Bilgere from Haywire. © Utah State University Press.

Keen Observation

This struck me with its lovely imagery. Listen to Garrison Keillor read it on The Writer's Almanac. Enjoy!

Crusoe

When you've been away from it long enough,
You begin to forget the country
Of couples, with all its strange customs
And mysterious ways. Those two
Over there, for instance: late thirties,
Attractive and well-dressed, reading
At the table, drinking some complicated
Coffee drink. They haven't spoken
Or even looked at each other in thirty minutes,

But the big toe of her right foot, naked
In its sandal, sometimes grazes
The naked ankle bone of his left foot,

The faintest signal, a line thrown

Between two vessels as they cruise
Through this hour, this vacation, this life,
Through the thick novels they're reading,
Her toe saying to his ankle,

Here's to the whole improbable story
Of our meeting, of our life together
And the oceanic richness
Of our mingled narrative
With its complex past, with its hurts
And secret jokes, its dark closets
And delightful sexual quirks,
Its occasional doldrums, its vast
Future we have already peopled
With children. How safe we are

Compared to that man sitting across the room,
Marooned with his drink
And yellow notebook, trying to write
A way off his little island.

by George Bilgere
from The Good Kiss. © The University of Akron Press.