Deborah Bogen

Deborah Bogen’s Speak Now This Charm

Superstition Review
A headshot of Deborah Bogen.
The cover of "Speak Now This Charm." It's very surreal. There appear to be lit rocks floating about an ocean. Clouds obscure the sky, and a stone structure looms in the distance.
Deborah Bogen | Speak Now This Charm (2022, Jacar Press)

In her latest poetry collection Speak Now This Charm, published by Jacar Press, Deborah Bogen explores grief, trauma, and vulnerability with concise and moving poems. Her collection is exquisitely succinct and profoundly gorgeous, with her poems ranging from one to three paragraphs, none longer than a page. Each word she chooses is necessary and stunning, and each poem stacks on top of the other like building blocks, creating a vast tapestry of experiences and states of mind that we rarely go looking for. In her poem “About Anesthesia,” Bogen finishes with the line, “That’s the beauty of the near- / death experience. You snuggle right up to / zero, but you’re not afraid.”

Ultimately, Bogen’s collection is a deep contemplation on how death impacts each and every one of us—whether it’s friends or family members’ deaths or our own. Her poems provide a strange sort of comfort for this inevitability of life: “Tonight, I will surrender this busy pulse and / accept their stagnant blood as mine.”

I loved reading “In Case of Sudden Free Fall,” Deborah Bogen’s beautiful and remarkable oneiric prose poem collection. A delicious gem, it takes the reader on a soulful and transformative journey. Under Bogen’s expert guidance, we travel from enchantment to melancholy, to surprising encounters with literary and artistic figures, to loss and death, and back to wonder. I’ll keep revisiting this collection time and again.

Hélèna Cardona, praise for In case of sudden free fall

To purchase Speak Now This Charm, go here.

Deborah Bogen is a poet and novelist. She has four prize-winning collections of poetry, including In Case of Sudden Free Fall, Let Me Open You a Swan, and Landscape with Silos. Speak Now This Charm is Bogen’s attempt to create her own form—the box poem—while including the box as a central image in the work. When she’s not making poems, she writes songs, plays guitar, sings in the family band and tries (with an ardent band of local activists) to elect ethical candidates locally and nationally. Bogen invites email responses at dbbogen@aol.com. To learn more, visit her website.

Deborah Bogen’s poetry appeared in Issue 12 and Issue 21 of Superstition Review.

Authors Talk: Deborah Bogen

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature author Deborah Bogen as our Authors Talk series contributor. The topic of Deborah’s podcast, as she says, is “prose poems: the how and why of writing them.”

She confesses that after writing three books of “mostly lineated poems,” she took a break from poetry, or as she emphasizes “poetry took a break from me.” She describes her struggle to write a poem, saying that she “tried, but could not do it.” After a time spent writing novels, she states that “a strange thing happened: I was filled, and I do mean filled, with the urge to make new poems.” Due to her time writing in a novelistic style, she declares that she “quite naturally… fell into the world of prose poems.” She had previously enjoyed the style, but now, “the joy…was that I had a form, a box into which I could place… what I was noticing in what we call the world.” She closes by urging fellow poets to “have some fun [with prose poems],” and to “write a bunch.”

You can read Deborah’s poem, “This Poem May Be Read In Any Order,” in Issue 21 of Superstition Review.

Contributor Update: Deborah Bogen

Superstition Review

In Case of Sudden Free FallWe are glad to announce that past contributor Deborah Bogen has recently released a collection of poems titled In Case of Sudden Free Fall. The collection has already received recognition from poet and actress Hélène Cardona, who called Deborah’s writing “a delicious gem” worth revisiting. Purchase a copy of In Case of Sudden Free Fall from Jacar Press here.

To read four poems by Deborah in Issue 4 of Superstition Review click here.

Congratulations, Deborah!

Contributor Update: Deborah Bogen

Superstition Review

Deborah Bogen bio photoToday we have some exciting news from past contributor Deborah Bogen. Deborah’s manuscript, In Case of Sudden Free Fall, has won the 2017 Jacar Press Full-length Competition. The book will be out next year.  Six poems from the manuscript were chosen by Jericho Brown for the 2017 New Letters Poetry Prize and one of those, “The Year God Developed Cataracts,” was featured on Poetry Daily on May 15, 2017. You can read that poem here.

Read four poems by Deborah in issue 12 of Superstition Review here.

Contributor Update, Deborah Bogen: Winner of the New Letters Poetry Award

Superstition Review

Deborah Bogen
Deborah Bogen

New Letters is a literary magazine that has an annual writing contest. Each year, three writers are chosen to receive $1,500 and publication in the magazine. This year, Deborah Bogen was chosen as the winner in the poetry section.

Deborah Bogen has contributed poetry to Superstition Review twice. To read her poems featured in issue 4, click here. For her work in issue 12, click here.

To learn more about the New Letters writing contest, click here.

SR Pod/Vod Series, Authors Talk: Poet and novelist Deborah Bogen

Cass Murphy

Deborah BogenToday we are pleased to feature poet, novelist, and SR contributor Deborah Bogen as our thirty second Authors Talk series contributor. Deborah addresses two points in her Authors Talk. The first point she explores is “some of the problems people are going to have when they enter a field that is, quite frankly, flooded.” The second point is “How do you connect with other writers?”

When MFA programs started, it seemed possible to have a teaching job in academia and also a be a writer. But so many people are graduating from MFA programs every year that it is no longer realistic to assume one can get a good academic job. Trying to help you “stay sane and stable during your writing career,” Deborah has three alternatives to having an academic job: take a day job, teach at a (private) high school, and find a job that needs good writers.

She says though “it’s hard to give up the desire – I can’t be the only one who has this – it’s hard to give up the desire for big time recognition,” it just isn’t going to happen for everyone. (Although she has some tips to help you find that coveted big time recognition.) Since every writer cannot be famous, she suggests investing in your local reading/writing community. Being part of a local writing community gives you the chance to meet other talented writers and get inspiration and new ideas.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes channel, podcast #223.

Deborah has contributed to Superstition Review Issue 12, 10, and 4.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Deborah Bogen

Cass Murphy

Deborah-Bogen_portrait-11_for-internet-copy-21Today we’re proud to feature Deborah Bogen as our twelfth Authors Talk series contributor, discussing common misconceptions about writing in her podcast “The Writing Project.”

What it takes to write is something that might torment the minds of many an aspiring writer, or even established writers who ought to know better. In SR’s first podcast of the new year, Deborah Bogen talks about the ideas that she used to have in the beginning of her own writing career, and smartly counters them with a blend of reality and humor. Flimsy excuses such as being too old, young, or broke; mandatory time commitment thresholds one must reach; and what “real” writing entails are just some examples. As Deborah says, it’s about “what has worked or hasn’t worked for our own making of word art.”

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Deborah Bogen’s poetry in Superstition Review, Issues 12 and 10.

 

More About the Author:

Deborah Bogen’s three books of poems are Let Me Open You a Swan, winner of the Elixir Press Antivenom Prize 2009, Landscape With Silos, National Poetry Series Finalist and XJ Kennedy Poetry Prize winner 2005, and Living by the Children’s Cemetery, ByLine Press Chapbook winner 2002. Her poems and reviews appear widely.

In addition to writing poems, Bogen is currently at work on a trio of novels set in 13th century. Book One, The Witch of Leper Cove, explores traditional herbal medicine, blind ambition and the early Inquisition in England. Book Two, The Hounds of God, is set in Paris where Church politics, the strict structure of the noble classes and the power of art collide.

She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, teaching occasionally, playing ukulele in the Highland Park Mini Band and writing lots of prose poems for a new manuscript, Prayer Flags.

 

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’ve now established a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

 

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Deborah Bogen

Superstition Review

Deborah Bogen_portrait 11_for internet copy-2For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’re now establishing a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

Today we’re proud to feature Deborah Bogen as our fourth Authors Talk series contributor, discussing “what it’s like to be a writer while you are not in school” in her podcast “Try This At Home.”

Writing courses and MFA programs provide much-desired support and resources for writers. But for people who have left these things behind, Deborah offers advice on how to create a different kind of structure. With topics like forming writing groups and partnerships, immersing yourself in the broader world so that it still benefits your writing, and achieving financial survival, she works through them all with a level of specificity and detail that’s all the more admirable for a 7.5 minute talk.

This is a tightly focused how-to that doesn’t disappoint. Flecked with alternating bits of humor and poignancy, Deborah takes advice you may have heard before and adds new insight and depth. The most resonating example for me came towards the end of the talk: “In the end, one person is responsible for your work.” Somehow, she makes this daunting statement sound like the most wonderful thing in the world.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Deborah Bogen’s poetry in Superstition Review, Issues 12 and 10.

More About the Author:

Deborah Bogen’s three books of poems are Let Me Open You a Swan, winner of the Elixir Press Antivenom Prize 2009, Landscape With Silos, National Poetry Series Finalist and XJ Kennedy Poetry Prize winner 2005, and Living by the Children’s Cemetery, ByLine Press Chapbook winner 2002. Her poems and reviews appear widely.

In addition to writing poems, Bogen is currently at work on a trio of novels set in 13th century. Book One, The Witch of Leper Cove, explores traditional herbal medicine, blind ambition and the early Inquisition in England. Book Two, The Hounds of God, is set in Paris where Church politics, the strict structure of the noble classes and the power of art collide.

She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, teaching occasionally, playing ukulele in the Highland Park Mini Band and writing lots of prose poems for a new manuscript, Prayer Flags.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Deborah Bogen

Cass Murphy

Deborah Bogen_portrait 11_for internet copy-2

Today we’re proud to feature Deborah Bogen as our fourth Authors Talk series contributor, discussing “what it’s like to be a writer while you are not in school” in her podcast “Try This At Home.”

Writing courses and MFA programs provide much-desired support and resources for writers. But for people who have left these things behind, Deborah offers advice on how to create a different kind of structure. With topics like forming writing groups and partnerships, immersing yourself in the broader world so that it still benefits your writing, and achieving financial survival, she works through them all with a level of specificity and detail that’s all the more admirable for a 7.5 minute talk.

This is a tightly focused how-to that doesn’t disappoint. Flecked with alternating bits of humor and poignancy, Deborah takes advice you may have heard before and adds new insight and depth. The most resonating example for me came towards the end of the talk: “In the end, one person is responsible for your work.” Somehow, she makes this daunting statement sound like the most wonderful thing in the world.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Deborah Bogen’s poetry in Superstition Review, Issues 12 and 10.

 

More About the Author:

Deborah Bogen’s three books of poems are Let Me Open You a Swan, winner of the Elixir Press Antivenom Prize 2009, Landscape With Silos, National Poetry Series Finalist and XJ Kennedy Poetry Prize winner 2005, and Living by the Children’s Cemetery, ByLine Press Chapbook winner 2002. Her poems and reviews appear widely.

In addition to writing poems, Bogen is currently at work on a trio of novels set in 13th century. Book One, The Witch of Leper Cove, explores traditional herbal medicine, blind ambition and the early Inquisition in England. Book Two, The Hounds of God, is set in Paris where Church politics, the strict structure of the noble classes and the power of art collide.

She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, teaching occasionally, playing ukulele in the Highland Park Mini Band and writing lots of prose poems for a new manuscript, Prayer Flags.

 

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’re now establishing a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Deborah Bogen

Deborah Bogen

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Deborah Bogen.

deborahbogen_1Deborah Bogen’s poetry books are Let Me Open You a Swan (Antivenom Prize, Elixir Press, 2010) and Landscape with Silos (National Poetry Series Finalist and winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, 2005.) Her YA Novel, The Wych of Lepyr Cove, was made available on Kindle and other E-book sites in Dec. 2013.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read along with the work in Superstition Review.