Haywire

by Bilgere, George

• ISBN13: 9780874216479
• ISBN10: 0874216478
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-20
• Publisher: Utah State Univ Pr

Summary

Tenth annual winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award,Haywireis a well-polished collection from a highly accomplished poet. With humor, compassion, and an unflinching eye, Bilgere explores the human condition in accessible lines and a magician's way with language. In images bright and dark, tangible and immanent, Bilgere brings us time after time to the inner reaches of a contemporary life. In subjects ranging from adolescent agony to the loss of parents to the comic pain of middle age, he finds no reason to turn away his gaze, and ultimately no reason not to define himself in joy Haywirewas chosen for the Swenson Award by poet Edward Field, winner of numerous awards and a personal friend of the late May Swenson. Field describes the book this way. "This poet, you knew from his very first lines, didnrs"t fall for anything phony-his own language is irresistibly no-bullshit down to earth, even sassy."

Author Biography

George Bilgere has published three earlier books of poetry, The Going, Big Bang, and The Good Kiss. The Going (1995) received the Devins Award, honoring an outstanding first book of poetry. In 2002, U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins chose The Good Kiss as the winner of the University of Akron Poetry Prize, and also awarded Bilgere, along with Katya Kapovich, the 2002 Witter Bynner Fellowship. Bilgere’s poetry has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. He has received grants in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Ohio Arts Council and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. New work is forthcoming in Poetry, Field, Denver Quarterly, The Sewanee Review, and Southern Review. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he teaches at John Carroll University.