Gold Line Press

May 2017

48 pages

Goldlinepress.com

“perhaps it was like singing” – “Duration”

Imagine if you live in a place without birds and then start reading Darwin. Let’s also assume you have no context about Darwin’s life or what society was like in his time. His notes would be a found object—full of fantastic descriptions from an almost alien realm. This is what it feels like entering A Catalogue of Further Suns.

Put another way, poems in Catalogue read like fragments from Kirk’s Captain’s Log.

Their visible spectrum intersected ours,

And their data systems were also binary.

– “Compatibility”

Foreign settings coupled with familiar concepts and human perceptions seduce the reader into these possible worlds.

They were devouring small birds, roasted

by the dozen, using the violet-feathered skins

to adorn their spines.

– “Omen”

Bergmann’s healthy imagination is peppered with humor.

And a man arose late one morning

to find a basalt sarcophagus, sealed

with lead, that could not have fit

through any door, but was somehow

there in his now-crowded bedroom.

– “Oneiroliths”

At root Bergmann’s poems are serious, and the poet always writes with intention. This sincerity is often cloaked in the guise of otherness and play.

They continued

wishing for more wishes

– “Chronomancy”

About the Author:

F.J. Bergmann is a poet, science-fiction writer, artist, and web designer. Bergmann is the poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change and former editor of Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

About the Reviewer:

Mark Danowsky is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal. Information about his poetry editing service can be found at vrscrft.wordpress.com.