Run the Red Lights

by Ed Skoog

"Skoog [is] fashioning a poetry that fluctuates and ripples as incessantly as open water." — Boston Review "Ed Skoog is a master of mischief and misdirection." — Prairie Schooner "Ed Skoog's poetry is so ambitious it takes my breath away." — The Stranger "Run the red lights" were the last words the musician Alex Chilton spoke to his wife on the way to the hospital. In Ed Skoog's new book the poems are running all the lights, the way that talking casually runs and flows over itself and intertwines with what others are saying. These plainspoken poems rediscover the relationship between talking and thinking, as they weave among enthusiastic jags about sex and love, theater, music, New Orleans, numbness, ghosts, wolves, history, violence, rescue, art, marriage, mothers, fathers, and children. After Katrina, I took the diet where you eat meat,
and lost almost a hundred pounds from a surfeit
of bacon, sautéed pork medallions, beef & lamb.
The weight fell away like a knight's armor
after a joust. I bought shirts at a regular store.
I played softball and ran bases, bounded them,
as if on a new, more forgiving planet. And
I went crazy, evened out, broke down again . . . Ed Skoog was born in Topeka, Kansas, and earned his MFA at the University of Montana. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Paris Review and Ploughshares , and earned the Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poetry Award and the Washington State Book Award. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2016

Reviews

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

A different style than I'm used to, felt a bit like inside jokes sometimes I starting in the middle of a story with no context. Somewhat hard to follow, over my head.

[Zane Hesting · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.4/5. Too refracted for my taste, but there were some good poems in here. Particularly three in a row near the end with "Downstream," "Free Climb," and "Black Rolling Bag." Clearly the poet is battling something throughout the book, but I could never figure out what it was. And I don't have to know exactly, but the context has to be coherent enough for me to at least make out some sort of shape in the darkness. By the end I was left with the feeling that I'd been through something, but don't remember stopping to touch anything. Museum-like. Still enjoyed it!

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it fairly well.

Not super-relatable for me, is why only the three stars.

I liked several of the poems' ways of bringing in music references. There was a poem called Karaoke and one called Downstream which were clever and funny and sharp.

My favorite poem (great repetition and circular language, thematically held together) was My Bodyguard.

I could spend a lot of time with it.

[Danielle Champiet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Run The Red Lights "is a book with its own 3-dimensional persona; a Sam Spade-like noir detective sitting across the table from you, regaling you with the mystique of Topeka, Kansas, adventurous liaisons and sultry theater experiences" and Skoog is "a master of mischief and misdirection."

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/run-...

[Christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this volume.

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much more accessible to me than first two volumes. Particularly moved by Poem Titled "Black Rolling Bag".

Poem structure approximates prose rather than prior random walk structures.

Thematically mellow bordering on resigned / defeated / depressed?

3.5 / 5

[Greg Bem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often claustrophobic and confusing (though partially intentional), this book demonstrates some of Skoog's greatest triumphs and greatest failures as a poet, and it entirely worth reading because of such demonstrated range.

[Bill Thorness · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Skoog's poems are visual, emotional, relatable powerhouses.