"Two Men Fighting in a Landscape"
Poems by Bill Christophersen
Kelsay Books, 2015
Some poets are good at conveying the menace of the city, the
dangers of life. Others are able to pull back into a
contemplative, pastoral calm. Bill
Christophersen’s great challenge is to give us both states 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 sang, 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.”
