This new collection from award-winning poet Floyd Skloot, tracks life in all its mixed possibilities, taking hard but necessary glances at our ever-changing world. Concerned with the fluidity and fragility of memory, Skloot's new poems move between the realms of health and illness; past and present; remembering and forgetting; and the stability of change.
Skloot is a versatile wordsmith who gives us lyric, narrative, and formal poemspoems in which lessons are learned from what is lost. His home, a fir and pine forest in western Oregon, provides the anchor for his work and lives at the heart of this collection. Dead artists, poets, writers, composers, actors, and even major league shortstops return to visit Skloot in the remote woods where he lives, and teach him about the sweet rewards of living in the moment.In Skloot's poems, we hear melodies interrupted, beauty resonating between those empty spaces and the insouciant chortle of a parrot who leaves us yearning for more of that indescribable something we're all searching for. Gauguin in Oregon, cello music vibrating in blue and gold, a mother disguised as a scowling gypsy jangling her tambourine: these are the images of Skloot's world, a place where life's tender moments can also be robust and bold.The Harvard Review called Floyd Skloot ""A poet of singular skill and subtle intelligence,"" and radiating from the center of Approximately Paradise are poems that earn this praise by emoting universal themes like a mother's love, acceptance, wholenessthemes that succeed in reminding us of an elegant and simple paradise that is always within our reach.
Skloot is a versatile wordsmith who gives us lyric, narrative, and formal poemspoems in which lessons are learned from what is lost. His home, a fir and pine forest in western Oregon, provides the anchor for his work and lives at the heart of this collection. Dead artists, poets, writers, composers, actors, and even major league shortstops return to visit Skloot in the remote woods where he lives, and teach him about the sweet rewards of living in the moment.In Skloot's poems, we hear melodies interrupted, beauty resonating between those empty spaces and the insouciant chortle of a parrot who leaves us yearning for more of that indescribable something we're all searching for. Gauguin in Oregon, cello music vibrating in blue and gold, a mother disguised as a scowling gypsy jangling her tambourine: these are the images of Skloot's world, a place where life's tender moments can also be robust and bold.The Harvard Review called Floyd Skloot ""A poet of singular skill and subtle intelligence,"" and radiating from the center of Approximately Paradise are poems that earn this praise by emoting universal themes like a mother's love, acceptance, wholenessthemes that succeed in reminding us of an elegant and simple paradise that is always within our reach.
Used availability for Floyd Skloot's Approximately Paradise