Catalogue
Gender Studies
Poems
Jeffrey Skinner
2002. 1-881163-37-7 / 1-881163-38-5
“Jeffrey Skinner’s new book—his best yet—is powered by a deep bittersweet nostalgia, a wry
skeptical intelligence, and a canny sense of humor—all of which he uses to take aim at what is fleeting and tenuous,
what is lost and passing away. Gender Studies is a literary accomplishment, a humane achievement.
—Edward Hirsch
“Jeffrey Skinner describes a difficult middle state between rising and falling, in which we tread air and are held in the eloquent suspension of feeling as form. Life’s gravity weights these poems — addiction, madness, suicide, and the lesser failures and catastrophes to which we all succumb. But levity is here too — love, family, art, the sense of the absurd, even memory, that gnawed bone. The poet feels the lure of the manic's romance, but unlike Lowell or Berryman, he chooses, anew with each poem, an heroic sobriety.”
—Bonnie Costello
About the Author
Jeffrey Skinner has published three previous books of poems, one of which (A Guide to Forgetting) was a winner in the National Poetry Series. He was the 1997 Frost House Poet-in-Residence, and in 2002 will serve as the James Merrill House Poet-in-Residence. When not residing in the houses of dead poets, Jeffrey Skinner lives with his wife, the poet Sarah Gorham, and their two teenage daughters, in Louisville, Kentucky.
Author Photo by: Laura Skinner