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Bikeman: An Epic Poem | 
 enlarge | Author: Thomas F. Flynn
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC
Category: Book
List Price: $12.99
Buy New: $5.89
You Save: $7.10 (55%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 420338
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 76
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.9 x 0.6
ISBN: 0740775596
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.71044
EAN: 9780740775598
ASIN: 0740775596
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Bikeman:An Epic Poem October 12, 2008
I heard the author on NPR, the content and his description fascinated me.The book was exactly as described. Excellant
 Active participation September 28, 2008
On Sept. 11, 2001 , Thomas Flynn worked for CBS News. When the second plane hit the World Trade Center, Flynn rode his bicycle to the site as a journalist, following his muse of curiosity. "If this coming event were a mythical beast/...my muse would not counsel caution/...but push me closer to the flame," he writes in the third canto.
Flynn uses Dante's Inferno as inspiration for style and form in translating the unspeakable experiences of that day into free verse that allow the reader to believe he knows what it was like in lower Manhattan on what Flynn calls "this forever September morning." We can't, unless we were there. And even if we were there, the interpretation of sights, sounds and smells is unique to each person experiencing them.
What Flynn does is take the reader inside his experience and memory of September 11th. He takes us along on his transformation from journalist to participant. It is a first-hand account like none other that should be shared with as many people as possible.
We walk next to Flynn and his bicycle as he watches the first tower collapse and during his panicked flight from the scene. We wait with him in a parking garage buried in the rubble and take every dust-laden step that carries him away the inferno. Some would likely call Flynn a survivor of the attack. He agrees, but uses a different definition.
Although some may believe that poetry isn't for everyone, that it eludes a common dominator that popular culture does not, that it is best kept for academia in its ivory towers or elitists secure in the supposition that their reading habits elevate them above the mythical common man, I don't agree.
At its best, and Flynn meets these challenges ably, poetry makes the intangible tangible. Metaphors and imagery translate the indescribable. When done well, poetry pulls you in, wrapping you in its arms of rhythm, letting meter carry you from one image to the next. It allows the words to take root in your mind and transform back into the indescribable that is now a part of you.
Take for example, the cantos dealing with Flynn's observations between the planes' strike and the towers' collapse. We've all seen the news footage and heard the reports of people who jumped from the towers. Flynn saw them as more than a segment on the news.
In the days and weeks to come, Flynn passes the pictures of the missing, all labeled "Have you seen ...." "Yes, I believe I have seen . . . ./I've seen him soaring/I've seen her dropping."
Flynn devotes a significant part of the poem to his initial shelter in nearby parking garage as he flees the "boiling/brimstone avalanche cascading from the tower." There is no light as the dust clouds force a small group further into the garage. Rubble from the tower piles up at the entrance. "It is/becoming clear my sanctuary/is to become my tomb," he writes.
As the group explores the garage by touch alone, one manages to break a window and the others follow his voice into cool air. "I roll through from the hell I did not expect/to escape into a purgatory of lost souls,/I among them," Flynn recounts, adding that his eyes have no need to adjust after leaving the dark garage. No sunlight pierces the dust. Streetlights that turn on too early for the hour are of no use.
...Here, out of the tomb,
it is still less than night and less than day.
I take in the morning air,
a dense and mourning air.
The descriptions of sights and sound stay with you long after the poem ends. It's a poem that's meant to be shared.
Remembering 9/11 August 20, 2008
John Fleming's introduction to "Bikeman" is a must read in understanding the power of the form Mr. Flynn has chosen for his writings about 9/11. He states "'Bikeman' is no less striking in its form than in its content, for it is written in a kind of searing free verse that attempts to impose some discipline on raw emotion without denying its intensity." While at first I wasn't that excited about reading a volume of epic poetry, I almost immediately saw the value of Mr. Flynn putting his 9/11 experiences into this form. His is an emotional reaction to the experience he had that day - and the form he chose makes it both more immediate and also more stylized in a way that imposes some sort of greater meaning on the individual events. While I'm sure that a straight-forward prose account of Mr. Flynn's experiences would be interesting, this epic poem is very effective in capturing the emotional response he has had to the events he witnessed and experienced. It's a book I will want to keep and re-read as a way of remembering 9/11.
 2.5 out of 5: Touching Personal Account But Not Great Poetry August 6, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Bikeman is a personal mini-epic poem about September 11th written by Thomas Flynn, who experienced that horrible day first-hand on his bicycle near Ground Zero. Using free verse (patterned after Dante's Inferno), Flynn recounts the horrors he witnessed as well as his own near-death experience. Poetry might be the perfect medium for conveying the devastation and despair of 9/11, and Bikeman is haunting and touching in many places. However, viewed objectively, Flynn's poetry is merely adequate for its purpose. Except for a few evocative phrases ("this forever September morning," "we did not live through it, we just did not die"), Bikeman is too simplistic to convey the depth Flynn is seeking.
Wow. What a Book. August 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Extremely powerful and absolutely heart-wrenching. Thomas Flynn gives us an unheard perspective of the horrifying events of 9/11 in his own poetic voice. Bikeman: An Epic Poem is certainly epic both in its subject matter and raw honesty of Flynn's experience that day. What a sad, yet truly special gift it is to be able to read this book.
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