Imperial

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. He's not just easy but defiantly easy to read. The rest of us professor poet guys maybe better give up writing funny-ruefully about our typical lucky lives, because Bilgere has the territory so well covered.

In Imperial, George Bilgere gives us the 'shared mystery / of being human / on this dark little planet,' with the perfect pacing and wicked aplomb of a comic raconteur. His wry observations of people—at home, in the neighborhood, at the university—purr with buttered irony. And then we feel the claws below the charm, and deeper beneath that, a sadness that won't be laughed away.

His lines possess the easy, colloquial rhythm of prose and imagist glint of good poetry. . . .In his best poems, such as 'Desire' and 'Ttraverse City', one tumbles through the lines to an ending that is surprising, funny or breath-stopping, sometimes all at once.

Bilgere's 'Imperial' gives me a rare pleasure; poems as open as windows. Filled with humor, love, and pain these poems are learned but not ostentatiously so. Think Garrison Keillor and Ted Kooser, both of whom have showcased many of Bilgere's poems, and you will recognize the key of this poet's clear, sincere, friendly yet serious voice. . . . Even as they engage moments that sometimes sting, Bilgere's poems convey respect for human vulnerability and, above all, a sense of love. Even the poems about loss give us page after page of radiant moments.