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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Acclaimed poet and editor,
Jeffrey Skinner reads as part of the Connecticut<br>
Poetry Series on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 5:00 pm in the Marcus
White<br>
Living Room on the campus of Central Connecticut State University<br>
<<a href="http://www.ccsu.edu/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.ccsu.edu</a>>. Free and open to the public.<br><br>
from:
<a href="http://www.ausablepress.org/c_skinner.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.ausablepress.org/c_skinner.html</a><br><br>
Jeffrey Skinner has published four collections of poetry: Late Stars,
A<br>
Guide to Forgetting, The Company of Heaven, and Gender Studies. His work
has<br>
received wide recognition, including fellowships from the National
Endowment<br>
for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Howard
Foundation.<br>
Currently Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University
of<br>
Louisville, he is also co-founder and editorial consultant for
Sarabande<br>
Books.<br><br>
IN HIS OWN WORDS<br><br>
"I would like to be the genetically engineered love child of
Zbigniew<br>
Herbert and Dylan Thomas. That is, I would like to write poetry that has
the<br>
philosophical ease and metaphoric inventiveness of the Eastern
Europeans,<br>
and at the same time sings like a drunken Welshman. I would prefer it if
my<br>
poems were a bit closer to speech on the elevation‹‹>/<‹‹speech
spectrum;<br>
I¹m very fond of the casual talk of our time. And I would like to include
a<br>
variety of tones and structural strategies‹dead serious and
slapstick,<br>
formal and "free." I want the thrill of victory and the agony
of defeat. I<br>
want to include that poor bastard they showed wiping out in slow motion
on<br>
the ski jump every Sunday afternoon.<br><br>
"I didn¹t discover poetry until I got out of college and was
trying to<br>
figure out how to beat the draft and, secondarily, what to do with a
degree<br>
in psychology/theater. By chance, I picked up a book by W.S. Merwin. I
was<br>
completely flabbergasted by what I found inside. No one had told me
you<br>
could do this with language. From that moment on, instead of working on
an<br>
advanced degree in research psychology‹which is what I was supposed to
be<br>
doing‹I spent my time in the unused depths of the University of
Bridgeport,<br>
reading other books of contemporary poetry, and every back issue of
Poetry<br>
magazine the library had. Then I started writing poetry, and then I took
my<br>
first class in poetry, from the superb teacher and poet Dick Allen. I
stayed<br>
up all night, many nights, smoking cigars and reading poetry. Ah, my<br>
twenties! I thought poetry was better than heroin. I still do. In fact,
it¹s<br>
too bad poetry¹s not illegal, because if it were everyone would want to
try<br>
it, and people would find out how good it is.<br><br>
"We all want to know why the universe is the way it is and not
otherwise.<br>
Or why it is at all. Poetry is my way of putting on such questions and
going<br>
outside for a walk. It¹s good for all kinds of weather, for the country
as<br>
well as the city. When I¹m inside poetry I seem compelled to enter
the<br>
ocean, or an idea, or a city I once knew, or my own cruelty, or<br>
whatever‹without lying. Poetry seems to have something to do with
attention;<br>
and with love, if one can say such a thing without getting all wet. But
what<br>
that something is, I don¹t know."<br><br>
*************** <br>
Ravi Shankar <br>
Poet-in-Residence <br>
Assistant Professor<br>
CCSU - English Dept.<br>
860-832-2766 <br>
shankarr@ccsu.edu </blockquote>
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