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Tantrums in Air
Emily Skillings’s highly anticipated second collection of poems, Tantrums in Air, is a wild romp through verbal reality, marking her as one of contemporary poetry's shining stars of humor, insight, and edge. Skillings writes through various poetic forms, reminding the reader how tenuous the line can be between a poem and, say, an Amazon review of the poet’s first book. Featuring a ballet in four acts ("part ghost, part sponge / a lump of pure refusal"), addresses to past loves ("I circle the circle / Of a compact mirror, open"), and an unconventional treatise on education, Tantrums in Air is smart and honest, reinventing both what’s possible and what we should expect from poetry.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
Published June 24, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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July 7, 2025‘Listen you skein of mould
You asbestos clown
You excuse you joyless
Sorrowless person
The line break is all
I have in this world
It is the mother
The wave and the undertow
The reconstituting cliff
I will jump from
My whole life
No matter how much
I want to end
I end up
Right back at the top
Staring out, face slightly perplexed
By the machine that returns my gaze’
You asbestos clown
You excuse you joyless
Sorrowless person
The line break is all
I have in this world
It is the mother
The wave and the undertow
The reconstituting cliff
I will jump from
My whole life
No matter how much
I want to end
I end up
Right back at the top
Staring out, face slightly perplexed
By the machine that returns my gaze’
August 8, 2025
Often wonderful
October 15, 2025
from The Fool
I'm beginning to think
that long ago
I got stuck in a poem
your poem
and grew weary
and lay down and slept
and perished there
it's not entirely unpleasant
bursts, itches of flowers
painting their lines
dividing up my things
I can feel them growing
over me, covering me
entering me
even now (8)
Electric
In the dream I wrote this poem called “Electric.”
Somehow I got the t in the middle of the title
to wiggle. All the words of the poem
were crossed out with clay-colored lines
that ran through like fences or wires.
I could only see the tops and bottoms of the letters.
When I scraped the words of the poem with a knife
like a scratch card, the text remained hidden
behind opalescent scars
which hovered and shifted, “cloudlike,”
wherever my eyes rested. I put the shavings
under a big lens, and it seemed to me that was the real poem.
I remain unsure of what it said. The sound attached was red,
almost “a berry caught in an engine.” I do not think
I want to write anymore. I haven’t in many months.
One line occurs to me and repeats. It will not make way.
But here, still, is the knife in my right hand. (21)
from Tantrums in Air
Took so long
to write a book
It's embarrasing
the middle—how it stretches
on, how it smells, desperate
"Are your fingers
in the margin?"
writes Lyn Hejinian
in the middle
of a passage
in My Life, and
the first time
I read that I gasped
because, of course, they were. (43)
from Ladies! Be Your Own Grave
In our shared madness
the ditch and I
we stare together
deep into my wound.
I will describe it for you:
French Bible painted white
in which a slit is laser cut
down through the pages, almost to job. (52)
Daphne
This thing happens
You write half a poem
And then stop
At the first sign of difficulty
So you have all these half-poems
The drooping heads of flowers
You call lilies as a placeholder
Stemless, waiting
Open-mouthed. To go back in
And look on them
Is something horrible
Better to forget they are there
Like the dram in which you know you've left
Your little baby all alone
If only you could recall where
And you're trying to stay positive
Was it under the pile of coats
Or in the closet
It needs the blue and meditative light
That runs from your body. Its name
The name of a flower, Dahlia,
Deliliah? Oh the pitiful thing
Must be somewhere, shriveling
In a box, an atrophied pile of sound
There is a window
Opens onto a field
Opens onto a dancefloor, opens
Onto a graveyard
Rachel, your most glamorous friend
Muses that the present has become
For all children, an ambient gel
In which the catastrophic and the banal
Ride at indistinguishable frequencies
She passes you a glass
And soon Delia
Is only a nagging thought
You have worn the black blouse
Encrusted in sequins
The pattern, venereal
Pink, gold, blue,
They flash as you twist your bones
Inside their fleshy
And mostly biodegradable case
You repeat a movement
That is like wilting
At an accelerated speed
To remind onlookers
How you once wrote poems
In one there was a blender
Full of white glue
With a fly swimming in it
With a fly drowning in it
You could stick your hand in
Press "pulverize" or "pulse"
But to what end
You've neglected the paperwork
All your life
Beyond the door, the grass is wet
The lawn strewn with what
You can't entirely say (65)
from Lavender Lake
and it's never stopped coming,
the language, the film of dust on everything,
even my books, even the words in the books
the days, the waves of tasks, the feeling
of coming so close to my own mind
but only being able to visit, as one peers into
a smudged aquarium full of dead water
in the forgotten room in someone's house (89)
from Turpentine
The idea, you explained, was to say a word,
but it had to be just the right one. It would come
from somewhere deep and inquisitive, must sound
meaningful inside the mouth. You cautioned me
against a kind of cleverness
to which you must have felt I was predisposed.
"Let's begin," you said, and paused
for what felt like a very long time.
"TUMBLE" you said. "CELERY"
I replied, almost instantly.
With polite tenderness, you explained
that the only rule to WORDS
was you weren't allowed to fetch your own
until after your partner had offered theirs,
as it was not a game of quick association
or one of blurting, but one of deep reflection
and slowness. (108)
from A Room in Dumb Bitchville
The great thing about velvet is, it shows where you've grasped it. It's a very emotional fabric.
It can crush. It can wear down in patterns resembling forlorn patches of earth.
You can write your pain in it. If you can do the walls in velvet, or even a dark dark suede,
you can make it so everything disappears. You don't want to disappear. I'm sorry.
I shouldn't have assumed to have pollinated your desire. Wait just here. (118-9)
I'm beginning to think
that long ago
I got stuck in a poem
your poem
and grew weary
and lay down and slept
and perished there
it's not entirely unpleasant
bursts, itches of flowers
painting their lines
dividing up my things
I can feel them growing
over me, covering me
entering me
even now (8)
Electric
In the dream I wrote this poem called “Electric.”
Somehow I got the t in the middle of the title
to wiggle. All the words of the poem
were crossed out with clay-colored lines
that ran through like fences or wires.
I could only see the tops and bottoms of the letters.
When I scraped the words of the poem with a knife
like a scratch card, the text remained hidden
behind opalescent scars
which hovered and shifted, “cloudlike,”
wherever my eyes rested. I put the shavings
under a big lens, and it seemed to me that was the real poem.
I remain unsure of what it said. The sound attached was red,
almost “a berry caught in an engine.” I do not think
I want to write anymore. I haven’t in many months.
One line occurs to me and repeats. It will not make way.
But here, still, is the knife in my right hand. (21)
from Tantrums in Air
Took so long
to write a book
It's embarrasing
the middle—how it stretches
on, how it smells, desperate
"Are your fingers
in the margin?"
writes Lyn Hejinian
in the middle
of a passage
in My Life, and
the first time
I read that I gasped
because, of course, they were. (43)
from Ladies! Be Your Own Grave
In our shared madness
the ditch and I
we stare together
deep into my wound.
I will describe it for you:
French Bible painted white
in which a slit is laser cut
down through the pages, almost to job. (52)
Daphne
This thing happens
You write half a poem
And then stop
At the first sign of difficulty
So you have all these half-poems
The drooping heads of flowers
You call lilies as a placeholder
Stemless, waiting
Open-mouthed. To go back in
And look on them
Is something horrible
Better to forget they are there
Like the dram in which you know you've left
Your little baby all alone
If only you could recall where
And you're trying to stay positive
Was it under the pile of coats
Or in the closet
It needs the blue and meditative light
That runs from your body. Its name
The name of a flower, Dahlia,
Deliliah? Oh the pitiful thing
Must be somewhere, shriveling
In a box, an atrophied pile of sound
There is a window
Opens onto a field
Opens onto a dancefloor, opens
Onto a graveyard
Rachel, your most glamorous friend
Muses that the present has become
For all children, an ambient gel
In which the catastrophic and the banal
Ride at indistinguishable frequencies
She passes you a glass
And soon Delia
Is only a nagging thought
You have worn the black blouse
Encrusted in sequins
The pattern, venereal
Pink, gold, blue,
They flash as you twist your bones
Inside their fleshy
And mostly biodegradable case
You repeat a movement
That is like wilting
At an accelerated speed
To remind onlookers
How you once wrote poems
In one there was a blender
Full of white glue
With a fly swimming in it
With a fly drowning in it
You could stick your hand in
Press "pulverize" or "pulse"
But to what end
You've neglected the paperwork
All your life
Beyond the door, the grass is wet
The lawn strewn with what
You can't entirely say (65)
from Lavender Lake
and it's never stopped coming,
the language, the film of dust on everything,
even my books, even the words in the books
the days, the waves of tasks, the feeling
of coming so close to my own mind
but only being able to visit, as one peers into
a smudged aquarium full of dead water
in the forgotten room in someone's house (89)
from Turpentine
The idea, you explained, was to say a word,
but it had to be just the right one. It would come
from somewhere deep and inquisitive, must sound
meaningful inside the mouth. You cautioned me
against a kind of cleverness
to which you must have felt I was predisposed.
"Let's begin," you said, and paused
for what felt like a very long time.
"TUMBLE" you said. "CELERY"
I replied, almost instantly.
With polite tenderness, you explained
that the only rule to WORDS
was you weren't allowed to fetch your own
until after your partner had offered theirs,
as it was not a game of quick association
or one of blurting, but one of deep reflection
and slowness. (108)
from A Room in Dumb Bitchville
The great thing about velvet is, it shows where you've grasped it. It's a very emotional fabric.
It can crush. It can wear down in patterns resembling forlorn patches of earth.
You can write your pain in it. If you can do the walls in velvet, or even a dark dark suede,
you can make it so everything disappears. You don't want to disappear. I'm sorry.
I shouldn't have assumed to have pollinated your desire. Wait just here. (118-9)
January 8, 2026
TANTRUMS IN AIR opens with a striking statement: "I am pointless." Skillings held my attention from that moment forward.
This is a book that wants you to learn how to read it - a welcome challenge. At times I enjoyed unlocking the lines (at other times, a chore), even so, I was never bored. I admire the reaching toward something new, her experimentation, and refusal to repeat the same type of poem throughout.
There's a playfulness and a close eye to detail. The title poem has a lovely section on Queen Anne's Lace. The often overlooked weed gets a nice upgrade here: "I love it when they are as large / and white as a china saucer. / The period in the middle. / A little centering gesture. / A sip of dark, a hole / into which slips all / the sky's embroidery."
I enjoyed Skillings' writing on ballet, dance, and movement. In the poetic essay "Prelude: A Lump of Pure Sound" she explores learning, pedagogy and dance.
The final prose poem, "A Room in Dumb Bitchville," offers musical lines of ballet technique: "I still have the low bow, the unfolding of the forearm that means 'after you,' / the demi-plie, the step touch, the ball change, the echappe, the heave-ho, the lunge."
This is a book that wants you to learn how to read it - a welcome challenge. At times I enjoyed unlocking the lines (at other times, a chore), even so, I was never bored. I admire the reaching toward something new, her experimentation, and refusal to repeat the same type of poem throughout.
There's a playfulness and a close eye to detail. The title poem has a lovely section on Queen Anne's Lace. The often overlooked weed gets a nice upgrade here: "I love it when they are as large / and white as a china saucer. / The period in the middle. / A little centering gesture. / A sip of dark, a hole / into which slips all / the sky's embroidery."
I enjoyed Skillings' writing on ballet, dance, and movement. In the poetic essay "Prelude: A Lump of Pure Sound" she explores learning, pedagogy and dance.
The final prose poem, "A Room in Dumb Bitchville," offers musical lines of ballet technique: "I still have the low bow, the unfolding of the forearm that means 'after you,' / the demi-plie, the step touch, the ball change, the echappe, the heave-ho, the lunge."
October 21, 2025
Ambitious and delightful, one of my favorite new poetry books. As in Ashbery (who looms, friendlyly) what can be expressed through language is sometimes stretched to the limit here, yet the poems stay connected (and often funny and devastating) thanks in part to the vulnerable and self-deprecating self-portrait that emerges—and also a great love of detail:
"Ignoring all the signs, I go
inside. I do the things I have chosen
in the lack. The amber
and green glasses in the rack
aren’t quite dry, but I return them
anyway, upside down
to their very own places
to trap this meanwhile
in which you never arrive
The water pools
at every mouth
to make a little ring"
"Ignoring all the signs, I go
inside. I do the things I have chosen
in the lack. The amber
and green glasses in the rack
aren’t quite dry, but I return them
anyway, upside down
to their very own places
to trap this meanwhile
in which you never arrive
The water pools
at every mouth
to make a little ring"
Read
February 16, 2026"from the secret soul inside the book (that all books possessed)" (19)
"The trees and daughters sound brightly tonight in the offices of difficult music" (36)
"what would it take/ to reach you/ in this still air/ in which I ride/ on my black/ wood horse" (37)
"A song about falling/ plays as you fall" (53)
"This rubber baby/ purchased online from Idaho/ arrived in tissue./ She cries real tears" (54)
"The trees and daughters sound brightly tonight in the offices of difficult music" (36)
"what would it take/ to reach you/ in this still air/ in which I ride/ on my black/ wood horse" (37)
"A song about falling/ plays as you fall" (53)
"This rubber baby/ purchased online from Idaho/ arrived in tissue./ She cries real tears" (54)
June 27, 2026
"turned / a / corner / to / hear / the / labored / ecstatic / song / of / the / twenty- / foot / drill"
A lovely collection. The Song Cave really doesn't miss. Skillings' poem "Gargouillade" was a personal favorite in this book.
A lovely collection. The Song Cave really doesn't miss. Skillings' poem "Gargouillade" was a personal favorite in this book.
October 19, 2025
Some good turns of phrases, turning the book for the last piece - I liked the variance in shape/form
December 15, 2025
See the little fish darting
in and out, see the plants swaying.
Isn’t she something?
in and out, see the plants swaying.
Isn’t she something?
December 17, 2025
This collection is stunning it its lyrical beauty, inventive composition and natural humor. One of the best books of poetry I've read in years.
July 17, 2026
kind of poetry that makes you grateful to be a girl. i enjoyed this.
Read
July 24, 2026favorite poems: “prelude: a lump of pure sound,” “balustrade: a ballet in four acts,” “heaven”
Read
February 2, 2026Disarming, delicate, intimate, raw!
I love that Queen Anne's lace: "large / and white as a china saucer. / The period in the middle. A little centering gesture. / A sip of dark, a hole / into which slips all / the sky's embroidery."
And wandering through the woods with this honest eye.
I love that Queen Anne's lace: "large / and white as a china saucer. / The period in the middle. A little centering gesture. / A sip of dark, a hole / into which slips all / the sky's embroidery."
And wandering through the woods with this honest eye.
September 11, 2025
My review for On the Seawall: https://www.ronslate.com/on-tantrums-...
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews