Glaciology |
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| Author:
| Skinner, Jeffrey |
| Series title: | Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-0-8093-3273-1 |
| Publication Date: | Oct 2013 |
| Publisher: | Southern Illinois University Press
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| Book Format: | Paperback |
| List Price: | USD $18.95 |
Book Description:
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"Once I walked a thin rail through a glacier" begins "Shattered Bio," the first poem in
Glaciology, Jeffrey Skinner's latest collection of poetry. Filled with images that slide into one another in a dreamlike way, from the "squeak of pine trees in a forest" to "pinwheel, the baby's hand," the poem provides a precise way of seeing how layers of tenderness and danger melt into one another, inhabiting the same world. At the center of the book, the eighteen-part title...
More Description "Once I walked a thin rail through a glacier" begins "Shattered Bio," the first poem in Glaciology, Jeffrey Skinner's latest collection of poetry. Filled with images that slide into one another in a dreamlike way, from the "squeak of pine trees in a forest" to "pinwheel, the baby's hand," the poem provides a precise way of seeing how layers of tenderness and danger melt into one another, inhabiting the same world. At the center of the book, the eighteen-part title poem takes readers to the core of misunderstandings as it juxtaposes the work of a glaciologist with fractured language, misread cues, and a literalness that defies conventional explanation. The lives of the glaciers are reported with a careful, scientific language that keeps readers emotionally at bay from the effects of their demise, and the speaker comments, "I consider language / mistreated these days, asked to explain itself / to justify at the same time it bears / meaning, to own up / to creation at the moment of use / only, and only that meaning."