Luster

by Bogen, Don

• ISBN13: 9780819566508
• ISBN10: 0819566500
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-03
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

Don Bogen's latest volume, Luster, takes on everything from bullhorns to the cultivation of olive trees in poems that are sharp-edged and open to surprise. They capture not just things themselves but the essential contexts--history, power, the personal and the social--that give them meaning. The stylistic dexterity and range of approaches here make the book as rich as the world it engages. Luster includes evocations of place and memory, character studies of figures from Coleridge to Tarzan, a verse epistle, and an extended meditation on machines in our daily lives, all within an overarching vision. From racehorses to waterwheels to great cities, Bogen illuminates "things that go," in both their dynamism and their inevitable decay. Luster traces the sheen of human activity that clings to the world around us: imperfect, irrevocably marred by time, but always gleaming.

Author Biography

DON BOGEN is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of The Known World (Wesleyan, 1997) and After the Splendid Display (Wesleyan, 1986).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
1
Thoroughbreds	3	(1)
Bullhorn	4	(2)
Epistle to Dr. Venturo	6	(3)
Cocktail Party, 1953	9	(2)
The Moon in the Water	11	(2)
The Trains	13	(2)
Card Catalog	15	(4)
2
Etudes	19	(6)
Métro	19	(1)
The Language	20	(1)
Musée	21	(1)
Bouquinistes	22	(1)
La Carte Orange	23	(1)
La Clairière	24	(1)
Rilke in Paris	25	(2)
Coleridge at Midnight	27	(4)
3
In the Middle of Europe	31	(4)
Look Out for My Love	35	(5)
The Objects	40	(1)
No Friend	41	(4)
4
Five Runs in France	45	(2)
Olive	47	(2)
Rain Forest	49	(2)
Cardinals	51	(1)
One Morning	52	(2)
From a Daybook	54	(2)
Stucco	56	(1)
Meditation on a Line from Whitman	57	(2)
Pedestrian Song	59	(4)
5
The Machines	63