Skin memory / John Sibley Williams

Author: Williams, John Sibley
Uniform Title: Poems. Selections
Published: [Lincoln, Neb.] : The Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, [2019]
Physical Description: xi, 79 pages ; 23 cm.

Availability

Finding items...

Series

The Backwaters prize in poetry

Contents

Machine generated contents note: Skin Memory -- Snake. Tree. Rope. Wall -- Dewpoint -- Hekla (Revised) -- St. Helens [1980] -- Then We Will Make Our Own Demons -- It Was a Golden Age of Monsters -- Sons of No One -- Spectral -- Symptoms of Shelter -- Everything Must Belong Somewhere -- There is Stil -- Nocturne -- New Farmer's Almanac -- On Being Told: You Must Learn to Burn Like This -- Advice Picked up Along the Way -- Swing -- Adagio -- Killing Lesson -- For C. D. Wright -- Rules of Common Landscape -- On Being Told: You Must Learn to Pray -- Always Greener -- Dear Nowhere -- Tonight's Synonyms for Sky -- Closure -- Prelude to Again -- As Above, So Below -- Star Count -- As a Child, Drawing Purgatory -- Off Season -- Variations on a Theme -- Fog -- Death is a Work in Progress -- Poison Oak -- The Animal -- Compared to Even the Smallest Star, the Moon is a Child -- On Being Told: White is a Color without Hue -- Salt is for Curing -- Than the Dead -- Inventing Fire in Northern Michigan in December -- One Horse Town -- Absence Makes the Heart -- We Can Make a Home of It Still -- On Being Told: You Must Learn to Love the Violence -- Father as Papercut -- Says a Father to the Night from His Emptied Nest -- Outage -- A Brief History of a Perfect Storm -- The Length of the Field -- Natural History -- Anything Can Be Made a Halo -- After-Bruise -- Sanctum -- Before, and the Birds After -- [this is only a test] -- Forge.

Summary

"A stark, visceral collection of free verse and prose poetry, Skin Memory scours a wild landscape haunted by personal tragedy and the cruel consequences of human acts in search of tenderness and regeneration. In this book of daring and introspection, John Sibley Williams considers the capriciousness of youth, the terrifying loss of cultural and self-identity, and what it means to live in an imperfect world. He reveals each body as made up of all bodies, histories, and shared dreams of the future. In these poems absence can be held, the body's dust is just dust, and though childhood is but a poorly edited memory and even our well-intentioned gestures tend toward ruin, Williams nonetheless says, "I'm pretty sure, / everything within us says something beautiful.""--
"Skin Memory scours a wild landscape haunted by personal tragedy and the cruel consequences of human acts in search of tenderness and regeneration"--

Subject(s)

ISBN

9781935218500 paperback
1935218506 paperback
9781935218517 electronic publication
9781935218524 mobi

Note

Place of publication from publisher's website.

View MARC record | catkey: 28615210