Judith Skillman Poetry
Judith Skillman is the author of eleven 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."
Flatiron, A Foreign Beer Garden,
and Picasso's Toad (with audio)
A Cadence of Hooves
from Yarroway Mountain Press
Animus
She watches the other, her well twin,
from a distance. Sees the part
of the story where that one
untangles a piece of clematis
from its hedge.
She marvels at the show
of patience with which a woman
loosens each branch, undoes
the puzzle of spirals.
Her own hair in curls,
a witch or a crone
come from elsewhere
while she was asleep. Her dreams --
the terrible things that happen there
on her pillow...
She watches it all
as if it were a film
and she the one-down,
out of luck protagonist
to blame for soap's maudlin lines:
I love you, I want you, I am happy, I am sad...
The day works over her muscles
the same knotted strings
that bound her once to a kite,
a piece of Paradise, the right side of youth.
POEM OF THE MONTH
February 2010
POEMS RECENTLY APPEARING
Copyright Judith Skillman, January 2010
