- Poetry Collections
- >
- Where Truth Lies
Where Truth Lies
Where Truth Lies
Bill Christophersen's fourth poetry collection, Where Truth Lies, treats its titular subject with levity as well as gravity. Its longest section features poems about a father's death woven into a cycle of calendrical sonnets. It concludes with a prize-winning translation of the Old English elegy 'The Seafarer,' that ancient specimen of spiritual truth-telling.
Product Details:
Paperback, 108 pages. Published Kelsay Books (March 26, 2020)
Praise for "Where Truth Lies"
"For Christophersen, truth is born in the Bronx and salted with ground glass. This is a bird watcher of starlings and grackles, a student of squirrels, a chronicler of death and dental work. And yet for all his urban grit, he is a Romantic. . . . Somewhere in this book, an indigo bunting flits through the starlings. And everywhere, beauty contrives to beat the odds, with mixed success."
--Tom Phillips, "Occupy the Arts" (blog)
"[Christophersen's] language is conversational. He uses dialogue. His rhymes are easy on the ear and unforced. . . . {Those] in 'A Defense of Poetry' sparkle with originality. Truth is discovered by the author in everyday situations and things, and in remarkably interesting detail."
--Richard Allen Taylor, Main Street Rag
"It was Keats, of course, who brought our attention to Truth and Beauty and their deceptive interchangeability. The beautiful and truthful poems of Where Truth Lies left me breathless with admiration. Bill Christophersen in a witty poet, and he’s a learned one, too, with echoes of his great forebears throughout, including Milton, Keats and Whitman. And yet the poet wears this learning with a blessed lightness. Indeed, Christophersen invites us warmly into his world here, including the sadness of loss with a father’s passing, and does so with a bracing formality at times, as in Emily Dickinson’s line: “After great pain a formal feeling comes.” I recommend these poems wholeheartedly."
—Jay Parini, author of New and Collected Poems, 1975-2015