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Close Reading
Close Reading illuminates moments in life when everything changes or comes into focus. Its poems of love, illness,artistic endeavour, spiritual and emotional awakening embrace taking time and contemplating deeply the flow of sensory experience. This lucid foray into encounters with artists and writers such as Cezanne, Paul Klee, John Donne, Robert Frost, or Floyd Skloot's mentor Thomas Kinsella, as well as family life, vertigo, and resonant personal places is a gentle, kind and inspiring journey.
82 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2014
1 person want to read
About the author
Floyd Skloot
52 books19 followersFloyd was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1947, and moved to Long Beach, NY, ten years later. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College with a B.A. in English, and completed an M.A. in English at Southern Illinois University, where he studied with the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella. From 1972 until becoming disabled by viral-borne brain damage in 1988, Floyd worked in the field of public policy in Illinois, Washington, and Oregon. He began publishing poetry in 1970, fiction in 1975, and essays in 1990. His work has appeared in many major literary journals in the US and abroad. His seventeen books have won wide acclaim and numerous awards, and are included in many high school and college curricula. In May, 2006 he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Franklin & Marshall College.
An Oregonian since 1984, Floyd moved from Portland to rural Amity when he married Beverly Hallberg in 1993. They lived in a cedar yurt in the middle of twenty hilly acres of woods for 13 years before moving back to Portland.
Floyd's daughter, the nonfiction writer Rebecca Skloot, lives in Memphis, TN, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Memphis and works as a freelance writer. Her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, was published by Crown Books in February, 2010 and became an immediate NY Times and Indie Bound bestseller. Her work has been included in the Best Creative Nonfiction, Best Food Writing and Women’s Best Friend anthologies as well as appearing regularly in the New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, O: Oprah’s Magazine and elsewhere. Her boyfriend, writer and actor David Prete, author of Say That to My Face (Norton, 2003), recently completed his second book of fiction and teaches writers how to improve their public reading skills. Floyd's stepson, Matthew Coale, lives with his wife and two children in Vancouver, Washington.
Floyd's current projects include new poems and essays that are slowly shaping into a new book.
An Oregonian since 1984, Floyd moved from Portland to rural Amity when he married Beverly Hallberg in 1993. They lived in a cedar yurt in the middle of twenty hilly acres of woods for 13 years before moving back to Portland.
Floyd's daughter, the nonfiction writer Rebecca Skloot, lives in Memphis, TN, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Memphis and works as a freelance writer. Her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, was published by Crown Books in February, 2010 and became an immediate NY Times and Indie Bound bestseller. Her work has been included in the Best Creative Nonfiction, Best Food Writing and Women’s Best Friend anthologies as well as appearing regularly in the New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, O: Oprah’s Magazine and elsewhere. Her boyfriend, writer and actor David Prete, author of Say That to My Face (Norton, 2003), recently completed his second book of fiction and teaches writers how to improve their public reading skills. Floyd's stepson, Matthew Coale, lives with his wife and two children in Vancouver, Washington.
Floyd's current projects include new poems and essays that are slowly shaping into a new book.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 26, 2015
A remarkable collection in five acts. First up, a series of momentary snapshots of famous artists on the point of their inspiration or a while after, reflecting on it. Some grip more than others - Jules Verne's balloon flight confirming his imaginings is rather splendid among these and I suspect that the closer one is to the artist, the more there will be to appreciate.
Act two is astonishing: a personal set of reflections, again short poems focused around an instant which yields plenty. The Shared Room captures the feelings of the younger sibling forever following in footsteps; Nostrand Avenue offers a collective memory out of the blue - a real Bobby Zamora moment as the folks of W12 would say. Lullaby is a heartbreaking image; The Race also focusing on ageing and death.
Part three continues the high quality of the previous section, with even the poems that connect less containing gems of phrasing that make you stagger with their skill. Starting with a beautiful tribute to his mentor, the section then glories in creativity and is a more personal view on the art of reading and writing. His espoused/borrowed view that reading fuels writing is a key argument and it is from this poem that the collection gets its title.
The meditation shifts from the past to a more vivid and sadly, illness-filled present. Winter takes the tone of the collection down a notch: unsurprisingly Terminal Condition keeps it there. It is a poignant work that needed saying - and if you are going to say it then why not say it in a sonnet? - even if it is not as ground-shaking (literally) as The Onset of Vertigo, which my wife assures me is a very accurate rendering of the situation from one who must know. It precedes a short series of excellent poems exploring living with the condition.
The final section contains a wider range of poems. Blank Journal is a love poem which is very touching - Floyd's wife, clearly much beloved, gets frequent mention. Closing in July is a very sad poem that suggests the autumn of life. Much of the latter part of the collection continues this theme, and, as the collection draws to its close with this, it made me sad to finish here and worry a little for the poet. I would certainly read more of Floyd's collections and I think this book deserves awards. Eminently readable and suffused with real skill throughout.
Act two is astonishing: a personal set of reflections, again short poems focused around an instant which yields plenty. The Shared Room captures the feelings of the younger sibling forever following in footsteps; Nostrand Avenue offers a collective memory out of the blue - a real Bobby Zamora moment as the folks of W12 would say. Lullaby is a heartbreaking image; The Race also focusing on ageing and death.
Part three continues the high quality of the previous section, with even the poems that connect less containing gems of phrasing that make you stagger with their skill. Starting with a beautiful tribute to his mentor, the section then glories in creativity and is a more personal view on the art of reading and writing. His espoused/borrowed view that reading fuels writing is a key argument and it is from this poem that the collection gets its title.
The meditation shifts from the past to a more vivid and sadly, illness-filled present. Winter takes the tone of the collection down a notch: unsurprisingly Terminal Condition keeps it there. It is a poignant work that needed saying - and if you are going to say it then why not say it in a sonnet? - even if it is not as ground-shaking (literally) as The Onset of Vertigo, which my wife assures me is a very accurate rendering of the situation from one who must know. It precedes a short series of excellent poems exploring living with the condition.
The final section contains a wider range of poems. Blank Journal is a love poem which is very touching - Floyd's wife, clearly much beloved, gets frequent mention. Closing in July is a very sad poem that suggests the autumn of life. Much of the latter part of the collection continues this theme, and, as the collection draws to its close with this, it made me sad to finish here and worry a little for the poet. I would certainly read more of Floyd's collections and I think this book deserves awards. Eminently readable and suffused with real skill throughout.
Displaying 1 of 1 review