FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“At his best, Bogen provides a multilayered lyric adventure for anyone interested in the directions of contemporary poetry.”
Library Journal

An Algebra
Don Bogen

An Algebra is an interwoven collection of eight sequences and sixteen individual poems, where images and phrases recur in new contexts, connecting and suspending thoughts, emotions and insights. By turns, the poems leap from the public realm of urban decay and outsourcing to the intimacies of family life, from a street mime to a haunting dream, from elegy to lyric evocation. Wholeness and brokenness intertwine in the book; glimpsed patterns and startling disjunctions drive its explorations.

An Algebra is a work of changing equivalents, a search for balance in a world of transformation and loss. It is a brilliantly constructed, moving book by a poet who has achieved a new level of imaginative expression and skill.

“An Algebra registers a series of unrelenting impingements upon a sensibility that may in more guarded moments find ways to deflect them. What comes through are only the essentials, pared down to the force with which they insist on being taken account of. The movement from poem to poem is headlong but strangely not rushed. The lines are short, the diction a model of clarity, and the rhythms impeccable. It’s one of the most compelling books I’ve read in years.”
James McMichael

Don Bogen is professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Luster.

 

Please contact Stephanie Hlywak at (773) 702-0289 or shlywak@press.uchicago.edu for more information.

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