Deborah Bogen
Epistolary poems loosen a bolt in the brain - easing the content into a conversational mode - at least one side of conversation. When I read these poems I feel invited to respond to that and when I write them I hope they evoke a similar feeling in the reader. Like conversations they give authority to fragmentary insights. They are, I think, best when they retain an air of unfinished thought...
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Dear Heart,
I remember the bed springs, the shutters, a fragile bit of
birdsong nearly lost in the cold and you —
speaking low, describing the Parisian streets, the crowding
and twisting, the constant bonjour.
And all the time the radio background, the French
announcer’s filmy words there at the edge
of our beginning where, beneath the rime-ringed lune francaise
incomprehension turned out to be another way
to learn things, torn between sleep and something harder to name,
wondering to what music we had come.
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Bogen's latest book of poems is called Let Me Open You a Swan. She is currently venturing into fiction. Her (young adult or ?) novel, The Wych of Lepyr Cove, will be up on various e-book websites by Christmas.