Jeffrey Skinner’s poetry reading at Russell House last Wednesday evening gave him an opportunity to reminisce about his first visit to Wesleyan.
“It was sometime in the 80s. There wasn’t even a pizza place in Middletown in those days,” Skinner said. “I took my two kids to go see ‘Superman.’ and they were crying and hating it when we had to go back to the house and it was all hot. So that’s my memory of Middletown.”
Such colorful, personal anecdotes occurred continuously during the low-key, intimate reading that was notable for the amount of casual bantering between Skinner and the audience. Besides making a strong impression with his conversational and image-rich poetry, Skinner was also willing to share an insider’s look on the nation’s best creative writing programs.
The subjects of Skinner’s poems were as diverse as the many stories he shared between readings. One poem that addressed the ironies of marriage was entitled “If You Didn’t Make the Bed, What Did You Do Today.” Another poem was written in the style of a rejection letter from a publishing house.
“Any of you who write poetry will one day be frustrated enough to write something similar,” Skinner said.
Most of Skinner’s poetry came packed with simple yet moving images of domesticity and other scenes from everyday life. In “Theories of Insomnia,” he observed “shelves of books like old friends who bore you.”
“Shore Rapport” was a brief piece of prose that recreated the tranquility of a walk by the Atlantic Ocean, while “Rolling in Clover” evoked the joys of fatherhood through such images like “the cherry pie making mess that filled the kitchen with white dust.”
In addition to being strongly rooted in domestic details, Skinner’s poetry also showed a propensity for strong, moving endings. An eloquent elegy for a friend who died of breast cancer concluded gracefully with “I’m glad you can read this now without glasses / And I’ll see you when I see you.”
“It was all a little whacky at times but I just really loved his reading style,” said Emma Komlosh-Hrobsy ’08. “All of his poetry was really lively. It felt like there was a richness to every line.”
Skinner also admitted that an integral part of his writing style was attempting to keep every line as lively as possible. Not only did this make his poetry especially interesting to listen to, but it also created a complex interplay between sounds and pauses. Each separate verse presented a memorable image, yet all poems still managed to retain a powerful unity.
“What distinguishes poetry from prose is the integrity of each line,” Skinner said. “Each one should be living in its own little bubble.”
Mirroring the intimacy of his poetry, Skinner also shared a great deal of his personal life during his relaxed chatting with the audience in between reading. Not only did he speak of the culture shock he suffered after leaving New England for Kentucky, but he also addressed the subject of his father’s death.
“I didn’t want to write a Sharon Olds poem about my father’s death filled with hospital paraphernalia, because that’s been overdone.” Skinner said. “My father was this very large and bear-like man. He was an FBI agent who once chased down a Mafia member in the freezing streets of Buffalo.”
Although the poem was not read, Skinner described in rich detail the surreal poem that he did end up writing about losing his father.
“It’s a poem about how I dress my father in a bear suit, drop him in the woods with a GPS collar, come back in a year and he’s married to another bear and they have little cubs together,” Skinner said. “I tell him, ‘Dad, it’s time to come home,’ and he says, ‘I don’t want to.’ Yeah, that’s basically the poem.”
Skinner was equally personable and approachable when it came to dishing out insider information about creative writing programs in graduate schools, much to the interest of the mostly-student audience.
“At Columbia and Iowa everyone is competing for the tiny crumbs that fall from the greats,” Skinner said. “If you go to one of those Ivy League programs, it really depends on how ambitious you are, and how much you like competing for a tiny piece of the pie. You could go to a place like Columbia, or you could go somewhere more low-key like the program in Eugene, Oregon, which only has six people and you get to work on your own literary magazine.”
Like most of his poetry, Skinner managed to conclude with a strong ending.
“What else are you going to do in your twenties besides grad school?” Skinner said. “You’re going to flounder around anyway. Might was well have fun and learn.”
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