Cavatinas for Long Nights

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Jim Christy has written books on Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac,
writers whose influences are apparent in his poems. He can use terms
like “hipster” and “cat” without embarrassment. His poems tend
to be good-natured, based on raw experience and spontaneous in style.
The conversational tone recalls Kerouac, as does the interest in jazz
and travel. Here and there the poems have touches of sexism, but
that’s part of the inherited beat persona. There is charm in a poet
who can write about the Frost Giant Ymir in one poem and about a sexy
flag girl on a highway crew in another. If Christy is to grow as a poet
(this is his second book), he will need to forgo a little of the charm
in favor of art.