Olga,
Poems by Louis E. Bourgeois
The
images and stories that swirl in Louis E. Bourgeois’s stunning collection
Olga can only be glimpsed, apprehended as through a glass darkly,
appearing and disappearing into the murk of our perceptions. Bourgeois’
stark lines embody the mystery of truth, in all its strangeness and shadow.
Sample Poems by Louis E. Bourgeois
“The poetic writings of Louis E. Bourgeois offer an exacting appreciation
of personal tragedy, and of an infinitely larger world that embraces ‘the
indifference of life to all things.’ With unwavering self-awareness,
the poet defies universal authority, and challenges the reader’s
perceptions of passing events. His work is void of spurious hope,
yet taunts us with a lingering sense of individual purpose.”—Laura
Qa
“What I love about Louis E. Bourgeois is the hard bone of narrative
in each work. No forced pieties of most poets of the day. Bourgeois
is in almost every poem haunting. Superb!”—Barry Hannah
“The work of Louis E. Bourgeois combines the haunting redemption
of Georg Trakl and the bitter beauty of Charles Wright into a necessary
21st century yawp. His poems are like small bombs that reverberate
in the mind, and he also writes some of the best prose poems of any poet
of his generation. His work never ceases to surprise and reveal.
Olga is a much needed work, a first book that you’ll return to again
and again.”—J.E. Pitts, The Oxford American
“The astonishing poems of Louis E. Bourgeois’s first book,
Olga, pass by in the silence of death or dream. In ‘Homage
to Georg Trakl’ and “Homage to Søren Kierkegaard,’
he writes of ‘absolute negation/absolutely defined,’ of ‘nothingness/and
dawn mist,’ in which all things lie ‘beyond the horizon/where
winter always is.’ This is his territory, too—one which
few have the courage to descend into, one where ‘They plan / executions
better than they prepare for all who enter and stay/ lonely forever.’
His poems are dark, yes, but iridescent with the precise, haunting imagery
of his Cajun landscape: a rich, rotting world where creosote fills
the air, armadillo bones serve as toys for children who play beside a
ditch, and a gar struggles on the shore of Lake Ponchartrain, its eyes
full of fire, wearing ‘a suit of armor that only we could see.’”—Ann
Fisher-Wirth
Louis E. Bourgeois teaches literature and writing at Rust College in Holly
Springs, Mississippi. Olga is his first book publication.
ISBN 1932339965, 80 pages, $17.00