Skeletons

by Deborah Landau

Witty and glam, Skeletons is a prismatic collection which shrugs off even the most disillusioned nihilist with humor and intimacy. 

Existentialism takes on a glamorous flair in Deborah Landau’s dazzling new collection. Through a series of poems preoccupied with loneliness and mortality, Skeletons flashes with prismatic effect across the persistent allure of the flesh. Initiated during Brooklyn’s early lockdown, the book reflects the increasingly troubling simultaneity of Eros and Thanatos, and the discontents of our virtual lives amidst the threats of a pandemic and corrosive politics. Spring blooms relentlessly while the ambulances siren by. Against the mounting pressure that propels the acrostic “Skeletons,” a series of interstitial companion poems titled “Flesh” negotiate intimacy and desire. The collection culminates in an ecstatic sequence celebrating the love and connection that persist despite our fraught present moment. Shrugging off her own anxiety and disillusionment with characteristic humor and pitch-perfect cadence, Landau finds levity in pyrotechnic lines, sonic play, and a wholly original language, asking: “Any way outta this bag of bones?”

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

80 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 4, 2023

About the author

Deborah Landau is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Skeletons, which was one of The New Yorker's "Best Books of 2023." Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and in three editions of The Best American Poetry. Her honors include The Believer Book Award, the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a Professor at New York University, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.

deborahlandau.com

Reviews

[Aumaine Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sensual as all get out, smart and fun! Chatty but not “about” a speaker, inasmuch as a speaker is a specific person with a history; these seem to be more about a diffused mind body moving through specific worlds

[Aarik Danielsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Landau is easily a top-5 modern poet for me. She does it again and again and again.

[Siani-Simone A · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the mention of bodies...the silliness of it all..., and the usage of alliteration that, felt too...silly. and i love silly poems not not for this! this was for a class will find out soon if this was the full poetry book.

[Ronnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

She tended to ruminate, spawning sad / kinda plaintive poems....

Even though the main theme of this collection is mortality and seclusion, with many of the entries set in and around the pandemic ("Stolen year but we're still here" -- "ouch this isolation it burns yet I still love virtual you"), as a whole it brims with mirth, quirk, wit, and life. The 32 "Skeleton" poems, in which the first letter of each line spells out "Skelton," are the most fun, but the interspersed 10 free-form "Flesh" entries and the concluding five-section "Ecstasies" sequence are, in general, more directly hopeful and sensual ("Bring on the filth and joy, / proceed as you will, / inhabit your skin like you're still here."). Choosing a favorite is tough, but the one I went back to first was the sixth "Skeleton" piece, "Strutting avec Cyndi Lauper," because of its final lines: "We were mad for the body in its meant-for-pleasure finery, lips a-cherry, / nails glossed wine, libido an overdrive meant to keep us here a long time." But this aside on the cellphone world from the third "Ecstasies" section made me laugh:

(We belong to a generation of hideous inattention
clutching our rectangles of light like--
who am I talking to?)

The collection leaves you wanting more.

First line:
"So whatever's the opposite of a Buddhist that's what I am."

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Any way outta this bag of bones?” asks the poet in these sardonic poems that brood over the pandemic lockdown, the pestilence of the flesh, and the body’s persistent allure in the face of mortality.

Favorite Poems:
Flesh: “It must give pleasure”
Skeleton: “Sorry not sorry, said death”
Skeleton: “Streaming Netflix”
Skeleton: “Soporifics fail tonight”
Flesh: “Every bliss is built this way”
Flesh: “I thought a lot about your body”
Skeleton: “Shabbier I am still a person”
Flesh: “The long and short of it”
Skeleton: “Skeleton, some wonder if you are practical”
Flesh: “You in your ecstasy of coffee”
Ecstasies I: “In the xyzs of nights and days
Ecstasies II: “Like most people, I am sad at the source”
Ecstasies III: “Are we done with life?”
Ecstasies IV: “Even coffins oblige”
Ecstasies V: “Catch me alive?”

[Sara Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the xyzs of nights and days we stayed as if the conversation would go on forever, you, you, you-ample days of you,

your beard accumulating a bit of snow, the gradual showing of bone, a grizzled diminishment.
The stacked-up winters, each in its place.

In this manner the years.
Spooled out the other side as if in plain view— a field without you.

Meanwhile we took good care, the greens were organic, honey sweetened the pot, the membrane between us stayed transparent, and we took seriously our allegiance to dream.

[Jessica Furtado · Rating 3 out of 5]

The “Flesh” poems were evocative and delicious. I appreciated the restraint and wit of the “Skeleton” acrostic poems, but many felt like they caved under the constraints, rather than blooming through them. Many of these poems felt hollow as an empty ribcage, and perhaps that’s its own play on the skeleton theme and the pandemic’s shadow looming as the backdrop, but overall this collection left me wanting. Its structure and overall themes are intriguing, but ultimately I found the majority of the poems forgettable.

[Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skeletons by Deborah Landau is a book of poetry that I find difficult to describe, but others have described as a "Dorothy Parker crossed with Sylvia Plath" or " Maggie Nelson and Anne Carson." I didn't think of those poets when reading this book, but gained more understanding when I read some of them the second time, but still found them difficult. This is not light reading, but poetry that requires some work on the part of the reader.

[Skylar Miklus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Experimental yet grounded, this collection combines seemingly disparate elements in an eclectic harmony of insightful verse. Landau has a clear and immediate voice that expresses itself urgently against the threat of the pandemic and modern politics. She uses wit and wordplay well alongside touching insight for the internet age.

[H]

the cover photo doesn’t do justice to how beautiful this is, gold letters shining against the translucent marble. i think i’m more interested in form and organization—the book switches between Skeleton and Flesh poems, and then ends on Ecstasies—than the words themselves, but i might need to give it another read. font changes! a bold choice. but does the work itself hold up?

[Cooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dramatic monologue revitalised

This brilliantly witty poetry gets to the heart of what it is to be alive. The body in dialogue with itself opens up a new space for the understanding of the human condition.

[Aline]

sealey challenge 1/31

“i wanted to write the thing itself— / pinned, magnetic, / ambient swoon in the infinite air” !!!

[Alyson Indrunas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorite line: "Nights were felt as a stream of departures in the hive."

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy read on modern topics. I liked the pace of these poems - quick but direct, like all good poetry not a word wasted.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not connect...

[dikshya · Rating 2 out of 5]

some were good....most were not

all the good poems were at the end too so I had to go through 70 pages of mediocrity to reach the good stuff

[Kevin Revolinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pondering the point of it all, and the finality. Not in a dark way, really, maybe wistful, sometimes sensual? Liked these.

[Riley Somers · Rating 3 out of 5]

poetry that i would mostly describe as fine with 3/4 standout poems, very simple but somehow more endearing than it has a right to be.