By admin in Book Review, Diurne, Fossils in the Making Tags: Double Review, Sugar House Review
Dayna Patterson reads Fossils in the Making and Diurne together for Sugar House Review:
“In both Fossils in the Making and Diurne, I’m in awe of Bagdanov’s recursiveness, how lines and phrases from poems echo within individual poems, but also across (and even between) the manuscripts, lending both books an almost dream-making, trance-like quality”
By admin in Book Review, Diurne
Thanks to Cody Stetzel for this new review of DIURNE!
“A spectacular achievement in diary and poetry and mindfulness; this book melds the real, surreal, and unreal in a neat alchemy of the mind. One of the most stark features of this book are the ever-increasing stakes of personal divulgence that several of Bagdanov’s poems end with. Bringing with it a dare, Bagdanov risks a level of investment and engagement for the reader — demanding their complicity in the sheer act of not abusing information provided. I think of this psychological projection in the mode of persona, but instead of personae-as-escape, George Bagdanov provokes the personae-as-infection; destined to give readers a clearer understanding of their own imaginations as opposed to the traditional poetic goal of swinging wide the padlocked doors to an Author’s imagination. Possibility is transfigured toward the reader’s capacity for creation and connection.
Read the rest here.
Thanks to Poetry Society of America for inviting me to talk about Diurne (Tupelo Press, 2019)! You can read the first poem from the collection and my reflections on its composition here.
In Diurne, I try (and often fail) to develop a method I call “impersonal intimacy,” offering to the reader different types of personal information—credit card #, address, email, as well as family histories, personal insecurities, and confessions to see what might register as expressions of lyric subjectivity and wondering which is the more intimate: my data or my desires. Or how one expresses or suppresses the other.