George Bilgere: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tar Pits

The last time I saw my father
was at the La Brea Tar Pits
a year after the divorce.

He was still living in St. Louis,
running the business
to the bottom
of a fifth of Jim Beam.

In my mind’s eye
he is a specimen, a foetus
of a father, floating in a jar
in some roadside museum.

I was nine. We had nothing
to say, so he took me
to the La Brea Tar Pits, as
divorced fathers do.

He was a membrane
at that point.
An effigy trembling
in another man’s suit.

We stared
at the three-toed sloth,
the dire wolf with its
marble eyes.

My father, I wish
you could rise from that
black pit and emerge

into light, like the tiger
we saw that day,
sheathed again in muscle,
its great teeth like sabers.

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George Bilgere’s ninth collection of poetry is Cheap Motels of My Youth, which won the 2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize.  In 2021 he won the New Ohio Review Editor’s Choice award. He has received grants and awards from the NEA, the Pushcart Foundation, the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize. He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and two exceptionally fine little boys.

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                                                                Saber Toothed Tiger lithograph, ca. 1902

 

Comments

[Denise Duhamel]

This is a heartbreak of a poem, a brilliant and real father/son exchange recollected with compassion....

My father, I wish
you could rise...

Elegant and beautiful!!

Cheap Motels of My Youth is a great chapbook collection.

[David Beaudouin]

What a devastatingly wonderful poem, the painful revelation of any son's absent father. Thanks, Terence and George.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, David, for the comment.

[Nin Andrews]

I love this poem and poet! Always brilliant, heartfelt, surprising.

[Geoffrey Himes]

On stanza of exposition, five stanzas of condemnation and two stanzas of wishful thinking. The beginning, middle and end of an entire, complicated story.

[Sister Leslie]

What a sad, painful but beautifully written prayer/poem…he speaks from his depths for himself and for many…Thank you Terence and thank you George…

[Grace Cavalieri]

No one tells the truth so beautifully and powerfully as George Bilgere. Poetry is deeply in love with him and his work.

[Eileen Reich]

This is a sad but heartfelt poem. I had a wonderful father who was always there for us. This is a cry from the heart. The artwork is amazing.

[Edward Mycue]

You poor child to endure this all these years.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, Leslie.

[Clarinda]

What David Beaudouin said. And —A great poem
By a great poet.

[Cindy Hochman]

I've been a fan of George Bilgere's for a long time, having seen his work in numerous anthologies. This poem is so vivid and powerful. The phrase "a foetus of a father" really got to me. It's not only a gut-wrenching poem, but also a brave one. Memorable, haunting, and reminiscent of Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz."

[Richard Giannone]

The wound of love hits a 9-year-old boy and doesn't heal.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

George Bilgere’s evocative, often heart-rending poem centers on a dissipated, divorced father and his precocious, nine-year-old son visiting La Brea Tar Pits. “We had nothing / to say,” notes the son from an adult perspective. From memory the boy (the “I” narrator) recounts a history of their relationship, as fossilized over time as “the three-toed sloth” and “the dire wolf” seen at the site. The boy’s paternal descriptions are stripped of veneer: “he is a specimen, a foetus / of a father, floating in a jar” and “He was a membrane … An effigy.” Yet the boy-now-man betrays tinges of regret and perhaps reclamation in the last two stanzas, where he wishes his father “could rise from that / black pit and emerge / into light, like the tiger / we saw that day / sheathed again in muscle, / its great teeth like sabers.” The fossils embedded in the asphaltic tar pits require assiduous digging and cleansing to be properly appreciated, and so does the father-son relationship at the heart of this poem. It poignantly ends in longing, not loathing. Bravo, Bilgere.

[Kenneth Paquette]

This resonates deeply. Thank you George.

[Elliott Newman]

A poem of gratitude where we are given a snapshot past the failure of the man into the majesty of fatherhood. George, this is another gem. - Elliott Newman

[Regina]

In my imagination I saw my father in a white linen suit, gentlemanly like a southern preacher. Thank you George for taking me back to my memory and desire.