Luster

by Don Bogen

Overview

Vivid exploration of what the world of objects reveals about our lives.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819566508
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2003
Series:	Wesleyan Poetry Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

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).

Read an Excerpt

Where is it going
in its carton of steel,
the body transformed
to a blunt dream?
It shines in the dark:
high beam, low beam
nosing a course
focused as a shark's
through a shipwreck--
you can't predict it.
-from Pedestrian Song

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Thoroughbreds
Bullhorn
Epistle to Dr. Venturo
Cocktail Party, 1953
The Moon in the Water
The Trains
Card Catalog
Etudes
Metro
The Language
Musee
Bouquinistes
La Carte Orange
La Clairiere
Rilke in Paris
Coleridge at MIdnight
In the Middle of Europe
Look Out for My Love
The Objects
No Friend
Five Runs in France
Olive
Rain Forest
Cardinals
One Morning
From a Daybook
Stucco
Meditation on a Line from Whitman
Pedestrian Song
The Machines

What People are Saying About This

Rosanna Warren

“In his hands, the prose of life turns to poetry of sober dignity, ethical urgency, and wit. He sells nothing short, buys nothing cheap. Luster is a durable and valuable book.”

From the Publisher

"Don Bogen has long been one of our finest poets, and Luster is his best book. Distinguished for its mix of styles and forms, Luster attempts nothing less than a reclamation of public poetry..."—Alan Shapiro, author of Song and Dance

"Don Bogen has long been one of our finest poets, and Luster is his best book. Distinguished for its mix of styles and forms, Luster attempts nothing less than a reclamation of public poetry..."—Alan Shapiro, author of Song and Dance

"In his hands, the prose of life turns to poetry of sober dignity, ethical urgency, and wit. He sells nothing short, buys nothing cheap. Luster is a durable and valuable book."—Rosanna Warren, author of Stained Glass

Alan Shapiro

"Don Bogen has long been one of our finest poets, and Luster is his best book. Distinguished for its mix of styles and forms, Luster attempts nothing less than a reclamation of public poetry..."
— Alan Shapiro, author of Song and Dance

Editorial Reviews

"Don Bogen has long been one of our finest poets, and Luster is his best book. Distinguished for its mix of styles and forms, Luster attempts nothing less than a reclamation of public poetry..."—Alan Shapiro, author of Song and Dance

"Don Bogen has long been one of our finest poets, and Luster is his best book. Distinguished for its mix of styles and forms, Luster attempts nothing less than a reclamation of public poetry..."—Alan Shapiro, author of Song and Dance

"In his hands, the prose of life turns to poetry of sober dignity, ethical urgency, and wit. He sells nothing short, buys nothing cheap. Luster is a durable and valuable book."—Rosanna Warren, author of Stained Glass

From the Publisher