reviewed by Hugh Fox

Rich, succinct, memorable poems here on killing butterflies, guilt (as a Catholic) about making love outside of marriage, writing poetry instead of going to psychological therapy, the birthday of his seven year old son, the horror of the contemporary world situation, screwing around with much younger women....a wide variety of poems, lots of poetic socks in the jaw. Gager is a social worker in Waltham, Massachusetts, very much involved with the poetry scene in Cambridge, hosts a poetry series at the Blue Art Gallery every month (The Dire Series). He has written and published fiction, but this is his first published volume of poetry.

His work is super-realistic, I hate to say the Beat-Buk school, but, in general, that's where he's coming from. At the same time, though, there is a touch of lyricism in his work that hearkens back to romantic classics. All these little glimpses of Beauty in the midst of the sordid, heavy Everyday: "Love/will walk/into this bar/(and it will)/maybe/a funny drunk gal....her hip bone/against my stomach/her face suddenly/exquisite, sensual/until she leaves.../she is/ IT HER SOMETHING ELSE/all rolled/into/one. /She is/about/thirty minutes/of hope caught/within the/blink of my eye." ("The Same Corner of the Bar").

This is what happens over and over again with Gager; he's in the sordid Present, bars and whores and divorces and 9-11, but always glimpses of The Ineffable. It's like St. Augustine in Massachusetts writing The Confessions, trashed by The Everyday, but always with time-to-time glimpses of The Ineffable.

Hugh Fox is a reviewer for the Ibbetson Update. He is the author of over seventy chapbooks, and is a retired professor from the Univ.of Michigan/ Lansing. Hughfox8@aol.com. Contact author for reprint.