Synopses & Reviews
Poetry. Born in Brooklyn in 1947, Floyd Skloot has written five books of poetry, three memoirs, and three novels. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, Poetry, Georgia Review, Hudson Review, and most of the leading journals in this country as well as overseas. He is a winner of the Emily Clark Balch Prize in Poetry from Virginia Quarterly Review, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. Floyd Skloot's memoir, In the Shadow of Memory, won the PEN Center USA Literary Award, Independent Publisher Book Award, and was named one of the best books of 2003 by the Chicago Tribune. "[Floyd] Skloot continues to be a highly disciplined poet, confronting chaos to capture and tame his enemy. There is ferocity living in his forms, coexisting with the sweetness of vanquishing sentiment"--Prairie Schooner.
Review
"[Floyd] Skloot continues to be a highly disciplined poet, confronting chaos to capture and tame his enemy. There is ferocity living in his forms, coexisting with the sweetness of vanquishing sentiment." Prairie Schooner
Review
"Selected Poems is a brave, generous collection, an apt testimonial to three decades of intense commitment to the world through the medium of the written word. At first glance, these poems are quiet and unassuming, barely whispering in a world of belligerent pyrotechnics. But, a close reading grants great rewards. Every word is attended to in Skloot's poetry, every phrase, every line. These poems are taut and vibrating, perfectly balanced. Nothing is superfluous, everything is intentional. Each of these poems is a gem, perfectly crafted and totally capturing both the reader's heart and mind." Chris Faatz, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
"A poet of singular skill and subtle intelligence"(Harvard Review), Floyd Skloot has attracted a wide audience for his singular skill at writing poetry that lingers; his words are intimate, wise, and deeply affecting. While including the finest of his earlier poetry, Selected Poems concentrates on his work over the last two decades, a period defined by life-changing illness, deep love, years of living in the remote woods of western Oregon, and a passionate exploration of the meaning of memory, the power of creative impulse, and the mysterious places where dreams and reality meet.
About the Author
Floyd Skloot is a creative nonfiction writer, poet, and novelist whose work has appeared in such distinguished magazines as The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Poetry, American Scholar, Georgia Review, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, Boulevard, Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Creative Nonfiction, and Shenandoah. His fifteen books include the memoirs In the Shadow of Memory (University of Nebraska Press, 2003), A World of Light (University of Nebraska Press, 2005), and The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life (University of Nebraska Press, 2008); the poetry collections The Evening Light (Story Line Press, 2001), Approximately Paradise (Tupelo Press, 2005), The End of Dreams (Louisiana State University Press, 2006), Selected Poems: 1970-2005 (Tupelo Press, 2008), and The Snow's Music (Louisiana State University Press, 2008); and the novels Summer Blue (Story Line Press, 1994) and Patient 002 (Rager Media, 2007). He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Beverly Hallberg, a master gardener and landscape painter, whose light-filled works cross between impressionistic and abstracted styles.