"Deborah Bogen's poems have a kind of unpretentious authority, sometimes ruefully realistic, sometimes quietly mysterious; the whole of Landscape With Silos goes to make something stronger and greater than its parts." ---Jean Valentine
"Here are poems of a lively intelligence, agile, wounded and wise. Landscape With Silos is a well-crafted, beautifully imagined, and transforming work. It is free verse that conjures form, and the poet reveals a range of mind and emotion that holds the reader entranced. This is, quite simply, a marvelous book." ---Betty Adcock
"Deb Bogen writes poetry that is naked and necessary, unadormed and political, intelligent and generous. The book brims with intelligence. And reality.---Carol Frost
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Landscape with Silos
One nail sticking up in a pile of boards,
air bladders from fish brought home for supper,
sugar in green glass bowls,
glittering rattlesnakes.
The palsied ghosts of cloudstained women,
shadows of railroad men far from their homes,
a deep-freeze filled with molasses cookies,
broken concrete, lilacs, thunder.
We drank water from old pipes,
picnicked under windbreaks, peach pits
and eggshells, and in the glove box
roadmaps to the river, to the reservation,
to Fargo and Minot. But no maps
to the silos where men tended missiles so big
we didn’t even dream about them.
They didn’t scare us, those missiles,
not the men either who rose like bankers,
sat calmly at the counter, starched and pressed.
Keys jingled on their belts.
They ordered root beer and blackbottom pie.