In this Book
- Glaciology
- Book
- 2013
- Published by: Southern Illinois University Press
- Series: Crab Orchard Series in Poetry
summary
“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 “Glaciology” 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.”
At the center of the book, the eighteen-part title poem “Glaciology” 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.”
The third section of the book further explores the tensions of life and death in ways both whimsical—by focusing on a fly, a vintage clock, rabbits, and Poland, among other subjects—and deeply serious. In the long poem “Event Horizon,” Skinner takes readers into an accident and its aftermath, which brushes too close to death. By the end of the book, however, a new focus comes into view with the birth of a grandchild in “All Things Move toward Disorder Except the Newly Created.”
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Part I
- Shattered Bio
- p. 3
- Kafka, Women
- p. 11
- de Kooning
- p. 13
- Terrors of the Night
- p. 14
- The Mission
- p. 15
- Signs & Portents
- pp. 18-19
- Jonquillity
- p. 22
- The End of Striving
- p. 24
- The Barber
- pp. 25-26
- Part II
- Glaciology
- pp. 29-46
- Part III
- Give Me Poland
- p. 53
- Corrections
- p. 54
- Vintage Clock
- p. 55
- Event Horizon
- pp. 56-63
- Throw It All Away
- p. 68
- Further Reading, Back Cover
- pp. 69-71
Additional Information
ISBN
9780809332748
Related ISBN(s)
9780809332731
MARC Record
OCLC
861536327
Pages
80
Launched on MUSE
2013-10-21
Language
English
Open Access
No