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The Dicer's Cup
The Dicer's Cup
Bill Christophersen's The Dicer's Cup, as the poem by that name makes clear, takes its title image from a treacherous surf. The poems, whose mix of free and formal verse poet Valerie Wallace has praised, treat such subjects as bumming through Scotland and processing a grandmother's suicide. Christophersen is a bluegrass fiddler, and several of the poems draw on musical themes and contexts. Setting off the narrative poems is 'Apostrophes,' a lyrical sequence that addresses the millennium.
Product Details:
Paperback, 96 pages. Published July 2017, Kelsay Books
Praise for "Dicer's Cup"
“In Bill Christophersen's The Dicers' Cup, poetry gets shaken up. The familiar becomes exotic. Even the sonnets are ‘action painting[s] barreling off the canvas.’ ‘Street People’ pulls us in, implicates us; every line is good. In the end he implores God, with the eloquence of George Herbert, to speak plainly: ‘Tell me you remember me and/ always liked me.’”
—Jill Hoffman
“This book is full of performative portraits: the daredevils of childhood, the refrains of bluegrass musicians, dancers and landscapes that turn under into a new century. Bill Christophersen is equally at home with the formal line as with the free; his deep knowledge of verse gives us a songbook we want to open again and again.” (p) —Valerie Wallace
“If readers of Christophersen's poems were not made aware that he is also a bluegrass fiddle player, they might almost guess, as his poems distill the complexities of living into soaring, heartfelt music.”
—Mark Belair