Open Books: Events
October 11, 2009 03:00 PM
ED SKOOG
At once hyper-real and surreal, Ed Skoog's first full-length collection, Mister Skylight, ($15 Copper Canyon Press) rises from Katrina's receding waters in New Orleans, the late night streets of Topeka, a bus rolling near Los Angeles, a sailors' bar in Seattle, and the sweet, sad, comic terrain of the self. The poetry, whether candid narrative, elliptical lyric, or near-mystical rumination, is graced with unusual detail -- "On the street at midnight, I hear / a hatbox latch fall open / in an attic closet, and then / the silence of Alexandria," begins the piece "Home at Thirty." The language, too, is vivid -- "Almonds drop and temple the soil," and "Sunset ripens and ruptures." Throughout, the book seems guided by an intelligence that is gentle, unassuming, and utterly clear-eyed -- "Failure's no problem for one who walks / without destination. The promise I've made / is to stay glad every dawn, / with one moment enough to go on ...."
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