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“When I was eight years old my parents got divorced. My mother packed her three kids into an old Chevy station wagon and drove us from St. Louis to Riverside, California, looking for a fresh start.” – George Bilgere
George Bilgere does curious magic with time in his poems. In his wonderful new chapbook, “Cheap Motels of My Youth,” we travel across states, stages and decades of his life in a bounce of colorful contemplation. Like the child who wishes to speed-up time and the father who wishes to slow it. Or the pre-turmoil bliss of his parents and the post-turmoil bliss of their son. Exploring what he calls “the shifting malleability and mystery of time,” George hones in on scenes and memories from different perspectives or perceptions of time to connect with the reader in surprising, funny and poignant ways. It’s at the intersections of these explorations, the sudden collisions of past and present, where George’s work strikes its most beautiful chords – tapping the uprooted child, sentimental son, anxious graduate, loving husband and aging father in all of us.
Author of nine collections of poetry, George has received grants and awards from the Pushcart Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Foundation. His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review, Agni and New England Review. He is Distinguished Professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and two fine boys. In the summers the family heads to Berlin, Germany, where the kids study German while George does important research on beer gardens.
