Two Men Fighting in a Landscape Bill Christophersen 9780692495582 Books
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“Whitman knew it, and Guthrie knew it, and Bill Christophersen knows it This land is yours and mine, but only if we say so. In Two Men Fighting in a Landscape, Christophersen lays claim to a childhood with the doo-wop singers and straphangers of the Bronx, a near death escape under a landing helicopter, a breakup amidst the ruins of the World’s Fair, a handful of imagined livelihoods, a parodist’s reading of the Great Poems, and a serious and beautiful translation of the Anglo-Saxon “The Wanderer.” Then, having made all this his own, he offers it to us, our land, recognizable and right here in our hands.”
—Jordan Smith
“Finishing this book is like going home after an extravagant banquet I’m stuffed, staggering, but sorry it’s over and feeling incredibly lucky to have been invited. The language has made everything I’ve been told happen right here, not before me but around me, and including me in the action, whether the lines convey words exchanged at a deathbed, a photograph, or a spattering of perfect details that capture the Bronx. The menu includes experimental sonnets, free verse and formal work; provocative responses to Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Pope, Frost, and Yeats, among others; ekphrastic poems that draw the reader into the visual work by both the senses and the mind; elegies that touch on the live core of now-permanently unsettled relationships; vignettes of characters in different occupations, viewed in a surprising light. For passages that, once read, become unforgettable personal experiences, see “Elegy for a Pencil,” “Meditation on a Quip by Frost,” “Veteran,” and the morally blistering “An Essay on Pope.” By the time you arrive at the surprising closing treat—a translation of “The Wanderer” that takes you into a medieval mind as if the man thinking back on his life were alive at your door—you will be infinitely glad you were invited to this feast.”
—Rhina P. Espaillat
Two Men Fighting in a Landscape Bill Christophersen 9780692495582 Books
This is a terrific collection of poetry. It is smart but never self-impressed. It uses language in ways that are wonderfully full in their imagery. Some of the poems take a couple readings to work through the layers Mr. Christophersen paints one upon another. Many of the poems are full of wit and a quietly self-deprecating tone. I would find it hard to list my favorites in this varied and diverse collection. Every poem was interesting. Every poem was fun to read even when delivering an emotionally strong and sometimes disturbing impact. If you love poetry you'll love this book. If you don't like poetry this one might possibly change how you feel. I recommend it heartily.Product details
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Two Men Fighting in a Landscape Bill Christophersen 9780692495582 Books Reviews
Some poets are good at conveying the menace of the city, the dangers of life. Others pull back into a contemplative, pastoral calm. Bill Christophersen’s great challenge is to give us both at once. The title poem, “Two Men Fighting in a Landscape” sums it up A bloody battle in the foreground, dawn breaking silently on the horizon. As the Incredible String Band put it, it’s a “troubled voyage in calm weather.”
In “Streetscape with Blazing Locusts,” the poet tells us that he lives on a mean street, on the edge of Harlem, where not long ago he was held up at gunpoint and lost his front teeth in the ensuing struggle. Despite friends’ entreaties, he declines to move, attached as he is to the beauty of his surroundings. This he finds on the pavement on a brilliant day after a Halloween rainstorm, when the “..broken sidewalk squares of run-down side streets/ mimic stained-glass windows for a couple of hours.”
“The Bee-Loud Glade,” is a takeoff on Yeats’s “Lake Isle of Innisfree.”
“I should arise and go now; but
Something roots me here
paralysis of purpose? striped
chemistry of fear?
No oracle but this hornet’s nest
whose dark eye stares me down.
A poet is a fool. I’ll
Take my chances in the town.”
This city-country theme is just the surface of a collection that tackles the deepest questions of life, again and again in dialogue with poets and poetry, past and present. Robert Frost says free verse is like tennis with the net down. Writing with the net up, Bill defends free verse in his own terms – formal poetry is like swimming in lanes, free verse bodysurfing in the ocean.
A chance encounter with Galway Kinnell leads to decades of meditation on the art and craft of poetry, and the gift of a poem to the master.
Full disclosure Bill Christophersen has been a close friend of mine for nearly forty years, a twin fiddler and fellow scribe. I love the guy, but it took reading this book to fully appreciate him. His greatest talent is to take scraps of things and fashion them into works of art – see his solo recording of fiddle tunes “Hell and High Water.” That’s what he does in this collection, divided into four parts. “”Old Movies” is about growing up in the Bronx; “Walks of Life” his observations of surfers, fishermen, comics, copy editors, high rollers, runners and best of all – ironworkers in a skyscraper, eating lunch on a girder 69 floors up, walking the iron planks where, like everywhere, “the only peace we know is contingent..” “Flight Patterns” pulls back and tries to take in the panorama of life and death on earth. And the last section, “Two Men Fighting in a Landscape,” peeks into eternity, sees Jacob wrestling God to a draw, and wants to know “what’s the take-away?”
He caps it all with a stunning epilogue, reaching all the way back to the origins of English poetry a translation from Anglo-Saxon of “The Wanderer.” The hero is a lonely vagabond, wracked with cares, making his way through a landscape of loss, keeping his cares locked away in “soul’s strongbox.” And the very last sentence of a poem -- of a book -- lashed with doubts and fears, is a simple affirmation of faith.
-- Tom Phillips
Bill Christophersen is a language magician who invites you into each poem then entices you to read and read again and with each reading acquire a deeper understanding. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.
This is a terrific collection of poetry. It is smart but never self-impressed. It uses language in ways that are wonderfully full in their imagery. Some of the poems take a couple readings to work through the layers Mr. Christophersen paints one upon another. Many of the poems are full of wit and a quietly self-deprecating tone. I would find it hard to list my favorites in this varied and diverse collection. Every poem was interesting. Every poem was fun to read even when delivering an emotionally strong and sometimes disturbing impact. If you love poetry you'll love this book. If you don't like poetry this one might possibly change how you feel. I recommend it heartily.
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