A Ceiling of Crows

Our dark bird of symbolism, our caw caw.

Where does the train of thoughts go?

In what order, and is the river of Lethe

above or below the earth? What about heaven --

does it lie in the upper region, above cirrus

banded, dried, pinked? If they flew beneath

the ground, in hell, we'd see what they'd done

to deserve their reputation, about which

little can be done except observe how they dog

the cat, drive the songbirds from thicket

to holly to hunger. On the shortest day

of this long, hard year, they'll still come in droves.

You and I -- gloved, hooded -- beneath a catechism

of crosses pouring through a hole in the sky

to peck at the blind sun, the halved moon.

Copyright 2012, Judith Skillman

To be announced.

Judith Skillman is the author of twelve books of poetry. Her work has appeared in Field, The Iowa Review, Northwest Review, Poetry, Southern Review, and Prairie Schooner.

"Skillman's poems embrace matter, rather than meaning, and all manner of matter from the Hellenic to the Hebrew, from the heroic to the quotidian ..." - from Poetry International, of Circe's Island

"Also fierce, rage-suffused, and undeniably brilliant is Judith Skillman, who offers us the horrors of her dark little vision, 'Infanticide.' Skillman's was the first truly brilliant poem I ran across on my poetic journey, and I was in awe of the sheer skill of her line breaks, movement, and control, as evidenced in this fantastic poem. Much like Heather McHugh, Skillman is a 'poet's poet,' and to read her work makes me rejoice, as poet, in the possibilities of the art itself."

1. -from The Pedestal Magazine, by Terri Brown-Davidson
   

Also see Judith at TreeStory, VerseDaily, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry.us.com.

Judith Skillman's new collection, The White Cypress, is a finely textured weave that astutely examines the "seven deadly sins" from varying points-of-view. Certainty is erased as the reader is immersed in a mercurial blend of myth and personal history. Though we learn that "stunting" can be caused by denial, there is also a "violence in pleasure and leisure" as subtext. Each cherub embodies a nymph, the exotic the familiar. Using crafty fluctuation, these poems dislocate the reader so that firm ground is not an option. Skillman's world is strangely fluid, yet layered with complexities that complement one moment and subtly contradict the next. The White Cypress asks us to ponder the residual problems of naming (our) "sins."

-- Katherine Soniat, The Swing Girl

Judith Skillman's poems are finely hewn, well-balanced, and compelling. Whatever her subject matter--ants, a lemon, September, a harbor, a plum tree--her pieces unfurl, progress, and culminate seamlessly; narratives, portraiture, and commentaries infused with palpable images, lines destined for epigraphy. This is poetry worth reading and rereading.

-- John Amen, At the Threshold of Alchemy; Editor, The Pedestal Magazine

Skillman's poem embrace matter rather than meaning, and all manner of matter--from the Hellenic to the Hebrew, from the heroic to the quotidian. All are pumped and stitched into the skillful skein of Skillman's work.

--Meredith Davies Hathaway, Poetry International

REVIEWS:

BOSTON AREA SMALL PRESS AND POETRY SCENE

Review by Barbara Bialick - In THE WHITE CYPRESS, Judith Skillman places imagery and symbolism in dissonant layers of nature, mythology, and personal history, to create penetrating parfaits. Each poem asks the reader to interpret it with care...

THE IOWA REVIEW

Review by: Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom - "In her thirteenth collection of poems, The White Cypress, Judith Skillman takes up again the tools of naturalistic observation and mythical allusion to examine difficult truths about the interior life of the self and its drives toward intimacy and seclusion, eroticism and entropy, as well as the paradox and complexity inherent in familial relationships. Skillman's tone is occasionally lofty but most often direct, incisive, unflinching."

THE PEDESTAL MAGAZINE

Reviewer: JoSelle Vanderhooft - "While I can still hear Sappho's jewel-like fragments in the pages of The White Cypress, I am most interested in the ways in which these fragments have become softer and more abstract than those I found in The Never. I am even more interested by the autumnal quality of these poems, if you will pardon such a vague descriptor. There is something about these pieces that is chill without being icy or bitter, wise without being cynical, and as striking as slanted autumn light glimpsed through tree branches."