Product Description
In the early 1990s, in his volume The Bears And Other Poems , Knute Skinner embarked on an extraordinary poetic project – the elaboration of short poetic fictions. In the intervening years he has become a master of this charged and compelling form. These short poems are exquisitely compressed narratives delineating and exposing lives often within a relational context. The narrators are a diverse adulterers, deviants, adventurers, lovers, friends, whose utterances and scraps of dialogue frame the foibles, truths, frailties and enduring alliances between characters strewn across a variety of contexts. In some of the poems there is an undisclosed but implied secret that entreats the reader to return, to name what has been conflated and intuitively sussed, and to define the intriguingly elusive and alluring truth of the poem. There are very few books of poetry that you would run back into a burning building to retrieve. Make no mistake, An Upside Down World is one of them.”
- Frank Golden
Table of Contents
Angel 9
The Barbecue 11
A Bit of Cake 12
The Brick Path 13
A Bright Morning 14
Carolyn and My Uncle George 15
A Difficult Start 16
Emergent 17
An Escalator at Euston Station 18
The Expert 19
Fawn 20
The Great Adventure 21
A Hand on the Doorknob 22
Here and There in Sunshine 23
Hot Buttered Rums and the Like 24
A Hot, Dry Day 25
Hot Weather 26
House Tour 27
I Go Cold with the Memory of It 28
An Interesting Cover 29
In the Diner 30
Kimberly 31
The Lady in the Car 32
The Last Twilight 33
Leftover Stew 34
A Lemon Yellow 35
A Little Joke 36
A Lovely Night 37
A Masterful Male 38
Messy Nights 39
Midges 40
A Mistake 41
The Moment 42
The Morning After 43
My Best 44
My Hands and Knees 45
My Hat, a Table, and a Chair 46
My Life—Such As It Is 47
My Measure 48
My Story 49
Now What? 50
On the Footpath 51
Passing an Afternoon 52
The Patio Roses 53
Perseverance 54
Pretending 55
The Raspberry Tarts 57
Recollection in Blue and Yellow 58
Regrets 59
The Reporter 60
The Same Dog 61
The Same Old Story 62
The Shopping List 63
Smoke 64
“So?” 65
Someone Else 66
The Stairwell 67
Stepping Out 68
Sticky and Sweet 69
Stopped Short 70
A Substitute for a Dog 71
Sunshine 72
That Distant Moment 73
This Too Will Pass 74
Trees All Around 75
An Upside Down World 76
Valerie 77
Walking Allison Home 78
Warm Colours 79
What I Have Assembled 81
What It Boils Down To 82
What She Said 83
Acknowledgements 85
About the author 87
These Salmon Poetry books have come into us unused and unopened but due to the storage in their last location they might have some scuffs or marks on the edges of the pages
Euro
British Pound