Abstract

Empire of Words

The article focuses on the books "After the Splendid Display," by Don Bogen and "Wild Gratitude," by Edward Hirsch. Bogen's work creates a different impression than it did as a series of independent pieces. Virtually all the poems contain a certain moral undertone which rests quietly but conspicuously beneath the surface detail. A number of the pieces in this article are overtly political, eclogues against injustice, exploitation or war. More than half the work in this collection is built up from details of place and era that range from eighteenth-century Vienna to fifteenth-century China. While many of Hirsch's poems, like Bogen's, rely on exotic places and assumed personae, here the lyrical voice comes through so vividly that even grim evocations of the Nazi siege of Leningrad or of Paul Celan and John Clare are suffused with a poignant sense of the poet's personal history.