new books, old books, reviews....
SPEAK NOW THIS CHARM
Speak Now This Charm is just out from Jacar Press;
This book is a mosaic of states of mind we all experience but are trained to ignore. Of forget. Or devalue. Bogen records what is visible and what is positioned just beyond consciosness.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Bodies
I've been thinking about your body. And the box
they put it in. Wondering if you're still in
there. If a hand under the lip of the box might
be a way of climbing in, or being in there with
you---
because once we were sisers. We thought our
bodies were eternal. And, sweetheart, isn't
tnat every girls' mstake? My hands ache to
touch your face, to brush the bangs from your
eyes. When they took you, when they closed
the lid on the box, Iwished I was a button on
your blouse.
IN CASE OF SUDDEN FREE FALL
"Grown-up poems for grown-ups." Stuart Friebert
"I loved reading "In Case of Sudden Free Fall," Deborah Bogen's beautiful and remarkable oneiric prose poem collection. A delicious gem, it takes the reader on a soulful and transformative journey. Under Bogen's expert guidannce, we travel from enchantment to melancholy, to surprising encounteres with literary and artistic figures, to loss and death, and back to wonder." Helene Cardona
Chosen by Helene Cordona for the 2017 Jacar Press Poetry Book Award, "Free Fall" contains a suite of poems chosen by Jericho Brown for the 2016 New Letters Poetry Prize.
LET ME OPEN YOU A SWAN
Click on the title for sample poems
What we have in Deborah Bogen's Let Me Open You a Swan is sublime poetry, the rare gift of a terrifying look into the shaping of a warrior poet and her work. Michelle Mitchell-Foust
In Bogen, suffering cannot be transcended, and yet, while tribulation is fiercely present, it brings to the world an ironic and stubborn luster, a glint, a scintilla of light. "Let Me Open You a Swan" is a vibrant and wholly original work. Lynn Emanuel
Landscape With Silos
"Deb Bogen writes poetry that is naked and necessary, unadorned and political, intelligent and generous. The book brims with intelligence. And reality." --Carol Frost
"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... quite simply a marvelous book."--Betty Adcock
Living By the Children's Cemetery
In choosing Living by the Children’s Cemetery as the 2002 ByLine Competition winner, esteemed poet and critic, Edward Hirsch, said "Living by the Children’s Cemetery provides a profound answer to the poet’s own call for "something sinister, something fragile, something Bessie Smith/ could sing."