In Bill Christophersen's the gods may not get it, but the poet sure does. He knows that suffering-of a people, a neighborhood, or a heart-is hard to detect from the distant view where a "four-car pile-up looks like tumbling dice" or a tenement going up in flames seems to be "blossoming." And so he moves in close, with startling powers of observation, illuminating everything from the honed violence of nature and humans to the astonishments of love-a lover "delirious as a gyroscope," a widower "tenderized" by grief. With their exquisitely tuned music, lively wit, and formal brilliance, Christophersen's poems do what they promise, opening doorways for us to know the world and ourselves up close, as humans need to.