As Man Is to God: A Poem on the Making of Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo"

"As Man Is To God " is a single meditative, comedic poem on the difficult filming of Werner Herzog's 1982 masterpiece of obstinacy, Fitzcarraldo, from a writer who knows something about persistence."Andrew [Nicholls] is not like you or me. The punk band he formed circa 1979 with lifelong writing partner Darrell Vickers, Nobby Clegg and the Civilians, was like a Canadian cross between Billy Bragg and the Buggles, and their resolute fans still haunt the Internet for some sign of life. Together they've written standup for George Carlin, Joan Rivers, Rodney Dangerfield and Garry Shandling; survived a year with Alan Thicke; and eventually became staff (and then head) writers for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." -Paul Cullum, writer, journalist

"For he had decided la métaphore juste
For the struggle of art, the mind's arrow unloosed,
Was a muse-sotted aesthete, a tune-loving pill
Dragging a steamship up over a hill."

Andrew Nicholls, il miglior fabbro of the precisely calibrated gag, lets loose with a rollicking tale in verse as astonishing in its foolhardiness as the film shoot it chronicles. Reading As Man Is to God is like watching a master jeweler carve Mount Rushmore. We stare wide-eyed as the maniacal miniaturist brings off his magnum opus, one deft, hilarious touch at a time. The result is every bit as thrilling and endlessly revisitable as Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, a rousing tribute to the folly and genius of our species. -Boris Dralyuk, translator, author of My Hollywood and Other Poems