Well-known in the Pacific Northwest for his diverse writing talents, Skloot has crafted another book that will be as highly praised as his others. The beautifully crafted poems in this collection probe the depths of extended illness, of love, of perseverance in the face of disaster, of the healing power of music and of art. The Evening Light illuminates the importance of the things that give us strength.
Floyd Skloot, recipient of the 1996 William Stafford Award, is a novelist, poet, and essayist. His memoir, The Night Side: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Illness Experience, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He lives in Amity, Oregon.
It's extraordinary to pick up a book of poetry and become so engrossed in it that you can't put it down. The content, texture, and drama of Skloot's poems swiftly move the reader into a rich, suspenseful world. Skloot has suffered for over a decade from what is probably Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome. Many of the poems in this slim volume deal with the devastating effects of this conditionDbut there is no trace of self-pity, no dwelling in the illness. Indeed, he is absorbed by the sensual, extravagant beauty of rural northwestern Oregon, where he lives: "We saw swash drench salt-fretted sandstone/ till the cliff seemed to shudder." Skloot describes the autumn foliage on a tree: "The slight/ sourwood leaves turn such brilliant/ scarlet it seems summer sun/ still smolders in the tree's heart." The first section of the book, devoted to wittily entertaining poems about artistic figures, is an absolute delight as well. Highly recommended.DJudy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Floyd Skloot is a creative nonfiction writer, poet, and fiction writer whose work has received three Pushcart Prizes, a Pen USA Literary Award, two Pacific NW Book Awards, an Independent Publishers Book Award, and two Oregon Book Awards. His writing 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, Hudson Review, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and Creative Nonfiction. His seventeen 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 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).
His newest books include his first collection of short stories, Cream of Kohlrabi (Tupelo Press, 2011), and a forthcoming collection of poems, Close Reading (Tupelo Press, 2013).
He co-edited The Best American Science Writing 2011 (HarperCollins/Ecco Press) with his daughter, Rebecca Skloot.
He contributes book reviews to the New York Times Book Review, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Review, Sewanee Review, Notre Dame Review and other publications, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Floyd has taught at the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Summer Writers Conference at Goucher College, the Paris Writers Workshop, and elsewhere.
He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Beverly Hallberg, a weaver and landscape painter, whose light-filled works cross between impressionistic and abstracted styles. Her paintings grace the covers of Floyd's books, Approximately Paradise, The End of Dreams, Selected Poems: 1970-2005, and The Snow's Music. See her work at www.beverlyhallberg.com.
Floyd's daughter, Rebecca Skloot, is the bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown Books, 2010), winner of the Heartland Prize and Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and named Best Book of 2010 by Amazon.com. Visit her website at www.rebeccaskloot.com.
Skloot is represented by Andrew Blauner at Blauner Books Literary Agency. Contact him at: Blauner@aol.com.
The Evening Light is a collection of full-length poems examining the passion to survive and thrive in a world of forces seeking to silence our hopes, dreams, aspirations, and even our lives. Floyd Skloot masterfully employs poetry to show that through true insight it is entirely possible to make our way through even the deepest darkness and out into the light. Bittersweet Nightshade: It has been months since I could walk this far./At noon the fence row thick with bittersweet/nightshade flashes with summer sun. there are/no clouds, no fleeing deers, no swirls of breeze,/nothing I remember from the last time/I was here. Now I prop my cane against/a post, lying back where the long stems climb/and scramble over everything that rests//in their way. I love to see these blue stars./Their five points bend back to reveal a blunt/golden cone nestled in the heart of the leaf/where in this light long shadows run like tears./The wide yellow berries starting to run/toward red are the exact color of grief.
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