5 Degrees and Other Poems

by Nicholas Christopher

Poems deal with the combining themes of magic, spiritual transcendence and exploration

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Nicholas Christopher was born and raised in New York City. He was educated at Harvard College, where he studied with Robert Lowell and Anthony Hecht. Afterward, he traveled and lived in Europe. He became a regular contributor to the New Yorker in his early twenties, and began publishing his work in other leading magazines, both in the United States and abroad, including Esquire, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, the Nation, and the Paris Review. He has appeared in numerous anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Poetry, the Paris Review 50th Anniversary Anthology, the Best American Poetry, Poet's Choice, the Everyman's Library Poems of New York and Conversation Pieces, the Norton Anthology of Love, the Faber Book of Movie Verse, and the Grand Street Reader. He has edited two major anthologies himself, Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (Anchor, 1989) and Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry Since 1975 (Scribner, 1994) and has translated Martial and Catullus and several modern Greek poets, including George Seferis and Yannis Ritsos. His books have been translated and published many other countries, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships from various institutions, including the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at Yale, Barnard College, and New York University, and is now a Professor on the permanent faculty of the Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Constance Christopher, and continues to travel widely, most frequently to Venice, the Hawaiian island of Kauai, and the Grenadines.

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodness, this one was hard to rate. I adored the title sequence, but found the remainder of the book to be a bit disappointing after the opening. I think "5°" is powerful and fascinating--yet another brilliant example of the uses of fantasy as emotional connector, here deeply inflected with allusion and neoclassical(ish) tones, which I found was important for the sense of deep humanness that this fantasy embodied (as opposed to mystical surrealism or an alienated surreal fantasy). Structurally, "5°" was beautifully counterpointed, almost fugal, a baroque composition that is sharply differentiated from pretty much any other sequence I have read. (I should look to see if these patterns appear with any frequency in contemporary verse or if Christopher is as unusual as he seems). I thought the individual lyrics were often good, but lacking in the brilliance that the countrapuntal construction of the sequence provided, although I did greatly enjoy and admire "The Palm Reader", "Bees", and "A Storm":

It's raining cats and dogs.
And did you know that "vindaloo" (as in
Shrimp Vindaloo) is not an Indian word at all,
but a pidgin slurring of the Portuguese
for "wine of garlic"?

There is a film I have otherwise forgotten
(but not the makeshift cinema in which I viewed it:
a converted bakery storeroom on the island of Spetses)
that ended with the line:
"If no one escaped drowning, who are these strangers?"

These poems through the reader into a sort of magicked America--there is something deeply and earnestly American about the poems, specifically the America of the average and of the north of the country, even when the poems do not take place in the United States. I think that is the most interesting thing about the collection. On some level, I feel this book is about America in the way that Lolita is about America. You can feel that it is, but it is hard to pin down why or how or what it might be saying. The construction of a place without needing to devote yourself to that construction is part of what makes this book succeed for me and part of why I am so interested in the power of counterpoint in the first sequence--how might such a technique make a nation?

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant earth-soaked poems with swooping imagination and sharp teeth.

[Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being mostly a traditionalist, I generally don't care for modern poetry. I make an exception for this book, however. While the "other poems" of the title are well executed, evocative and make for good reading, it's the main poem that brings me back to this book every year or two. Every time I read it I find either something I missed previously or see something in a new light.

[Alex Long · Rating 3 out of 5]

The titular sequence is great, but the rest of the poems are boring and uninspired.

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fritz lent me this one and I loved it. The long title poem was just amazing--the recurring themes, the historical elements, I was just really impressed. I liked quite a few of the other poems as well. There were some that made me say "Oh!" and close the book (which I think is a good thing--poems that overwhelmed me with their beauty such that I couldn't keep reading and had to come back to the book later). "The Quinero Sisters, 1968" was a poem like this. There were others (like "After a Long Illness") that I found less compelling, but these tended to be the wilder and less narrative poems, which makes sense considering my usual taste in poetry. I definitely want to read more of Christopher's work--highly recommended.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagination poetry at its best!