<P>Don Bogen's latest volume, Luster, takes on everything from bullhorns to the cultivation of olive trees in poems that are sharp-edged and open to surprise. They capture not just things themselves but the essential contextshistory, power, the personal and the socialthat give them meaning. The stylistic dexterity and range of approaches here make the book as rich as the world it engages. Luster includes evocations of place and memory, character studies of figures from Coleridge to Tarzan, a verse epistle, and an extended meditation on machines in our daily lives, all within an overarching vision. From racehorses to waterwheels to great cities, Bogen illuminates "things that go," in both their dynamism and their inevitable decay. Luster traces the sheen of human activity that clings to the world around us: imperfect, irrevocably marred by time, but always gleaming.</P>

DON BOGEN is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of The Known World (Wesleyan, 1997) and After the Splendid Display (Wesleyan, 1986).

Acknowledgements
Thoroughbreds
Bullhorn
Epistle to Dr. Venturo
Cocktail Party, 1953
The Moon in the Water
The Trains
Card Catalog
Etudes
Metro
The Language
Musee
Bouquinistes
La Carte Orange
La Clairiere
Rilke in Paris
Coleridge at MIdnight
In the Middle of Europe
Look Out for My Love
The Objects
No Friend
Five Runs in France
Olive
Rain Forest
Cardinals
One Morning
From a Daybook
Stucco
Meditation on a Line from Whitman
Pedestrian Song
The Machines