Bikeman: An Epic Poem (Hardcover)

~ Thomas F. Flynn (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

On September 11, 2001, journalist Tom Flynn set off on his bike toward the World Trade Towers not knowing what he was riding into. Bikeman is one man's journey back to the horrors of that day and to the humanity that somehow emerged from the dust and the death. Both heartbreaking and haunting, his words will stay with you like that 'forever September morning.'" --Meredith Vieira, NBC's Today

"Tom Flynn brings to his subject three invaluable attributes: the eye of a seasoned journalist, the soul of a poet, and his stunning, first-hand experience of that horrific day.

About the Author

Thomas Flynn is an award-winning television producer and writer. He explains that the style of this book formed as he re-read Dante's Inferno and began to realize how "the parallel worlds of his journey to hell and mine ran together." Flynn is married to Nancy Reardon and has a daughter, Kate. He divides his time between downtown New York City and Cape Cod.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 76 pages
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC; First Edition edition (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0740775596
• ISBN-13: 978-0740775598
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #675,668 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Active participation, September 28, 2008

By	T. Dotts (Pottstown, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unexpectedly Powerful, June 19, 2008

By	L. Lynette Mejia (Lafayette, LA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical when I received a copy of Thomas Flynn's Bikeman to review. An epic poem? About 9/11? The events of that day can certainly be considered epic by any standard, but poetry that seeks to record such an event seems almost...outdated. I opened the book and flipped around at random, glancing at the page in front of me. This is what I read:

They topple out of shattered windows.
They soar: two or three at once or four.
They fall straight as straws.
They do not tumble like a child's jacks
but fly straight. The frantic arm waving is over.
They fall resigned.

The impact of those verses hit me like a brick wall, and stayed in my mind until later that night when I sat down to read the rest of the book. I was impressed.

The beauty of poetry lies in its ability to condense emotion and experience into small and powerful packets of verse. There are no spare words - each line is crafted with careful accuracy, cutting with a surgeon's precision. The result has something like the impact of visual art - immediate and stunning. Flynn seems to understand that principle, and with his choice of form, has distilled the events of 9/11 into a raw, almost visceral experience.

To most of us, that September morning was a series of images, horrifyingly surreal, of tragedy and terror. We watched in unbelief as people jumped to their deaths, and two iconic buildings crashed to the ground as so much rubble. Instead of writing a book that rehashes the facts of that day, Flynn instead revisits the emotions - the anger, helplessness and grief that we felt as a nation.

Thomas Flynn is by trade a journalist, and this book makes a point of highlighting that fact. Dan Rather wrote the foreword. His colleagues Diane Sawyer, Harry Smith, and Meredith Vieira, read it and wrote blurbs for the jacket. What this book gives us, however, is not cold, hard journalistic perspective. Instead, what it offers is much, much more. Epic indeed.

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable, original work, January 20, 2009

By	New York City Teacher - See all my reviews

Thomas Flynn's Bikeman is so moving, but it is also so fascinating. His choice of epic mode and idiom seem strangely fitting. I hope to read it with my students--ideed I bet it would be a remarkable and quite interesting choice for the high school classroom studying September 11th. Tremendously interesting for discussion.