Mister Skylight Book

Oh, my, what a book. Something about Skoog's treatment of disaster powerfully speaks to me. We get a sense of expeditions doomed before they begin - bleak, beautiful images of skeleton coasts, "pig-like hands that hold up sails," a surreal litany of disease and death-dealing.

Skoog comes at tragedy from an oblique angle; indeed, disaster is less the theme than the backdrop of his work here. Nor is he particularly concerned with survival or rescue ("I, too, am tired of miraculous recoveries"). This is about the limits of witness, the fragility of calamity's claim to our attention. All this ruin - hurricane, flood, death, disease - and already, we're moving on: "Soon this attention will be over and I'll return to car, / wheel baby across the difficult tracks, / the ice in my soda barely melted."

Despite the governing theme, there are moments of stillness, respite, and whimsy (like the "candied" red sedan, whose hood "glistens like licked cinnamon"). But such moments seem to emerge in spite of "exile and years of night;" "rage shame guilt or scold." However hopeful the mood, the specter of Mister Skylight* is always lurking in the corners.

I love the "placeness" of Skoog's work, the stark specificity of people and towns, the proprietary nouns of local climates and geographies. And he mixes with this strong descriptive language slant commentary that guides our readings: "My disarray is so local" and, "I'm sorry if this is ruining anything."

For the most part, I prefer Skoog's shorter poems to his longer ones (with the exception of the titular poem cycle, which left me, frankly, agog). Some of the longer poems feel unwieldy and distracted, even forced in their opacity, somehow. Then again, perhaps they will reward repeated readings. I guess I'll find out; I am happily putting this on my "to re-read" shelf.

*Mister Skylight is a code word used to alert a ship's crew to disaster without alarming the passengers.