Skin: Poems

(Paperback)

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Description

The first collection in over a decade from a master of his craft, Skin presents us with poems that find richness in life's smallest moments. Twisting from overheard conversation to the landscape of Michigan to the precise inner life of their speaker, the poems of Skin are as carefully traced as the trim on a bedroom wall. These are poems that drift with subtle deliberation, "thoughts that slide / into notice, like hunger." And they are full-sensory experiences, shaded by Robert VanderMolen's particular care to everyday curiosities: "rain the sound of dropping dead insects," "the smell of dog sweat / on a back seat in summer," a curious bear interrupting a soccer game. VanderMolen's lines make their intricate moves with utter clarity of vision, and find their momentum in the dialogue of ordinary people. These characters quip, argue, and banter in bars and on art museum steps. They talk past each other-one woman revealing the textures of her dreams and worries, while another comments blithely on a train that's moving too slowly. And, as seen through VanderMolen's eyes, they fully grant us the gift of attention to the surprises, humor, and idiosyncrasies of our lives. By turns beguiling, undramatically tender, and abrupt, Skin builds a nuanced portrait of a single life in a singular place, surrounded by fresh water and buried in the snow.

Reviews

Praise for Skin

How difficult to piece one observation / Into the next without hyperbole or minor lie, VanderMolen writes early in this book, his 12th, a testament to watchfulness.New York Times Book Review, New & Noteworthy Poetry

VanderMolen offers in this finely polished 12th book an assembly of poems that are intricate and sturdy, woven with well-chosen strands of candor . . . The result is a work of abundant pleasures, a testament to art as affirmation of human life. Publishers Weekly

Robert VanderMolen finds and propounds the courage to hold himself accountable for the unaccountable consequences of Attention, of Vision. Thus his is a law without bounds and an unconditional mercy. The Sublime is always inappropriate, and VanderMolen delights in sublimity without shame. Honor him.Donald Revell

For over half a century now, Robert VanderMolen has been shoring up the fragments of our increasingly pixelated lives to form some of the most surprising, original poems in the American pantheon. You wont hear any of the usual notes in these pages, wont sense the prevalent gestures. Though written by one of our most accomplished, these new poems contain the freshness of dawn-met birdsong, of something that rises up / Out of the murk of sleep and turns true. Gorgeous, mirror-polishing poems.Chris Dombrowski

In the poetry of Robert VanderMolen you see a familiar American landscape from the side, and within a few poems, to get accustomed, you are walking beside him through the tall grass, listening to his confidential insights in their rigorous but easygoing stride. As a guide, he takes you to the spots where, if youre quiet, youll observe all the compassion and endurance that migrates through his corner of the world, and through the rivers of his sensibility, where, as in his poem Three Things, Beauty is relative, / Truth elusive, someone reported / As a teenager I made it my motto.Ed Skoog

Skin reflects earnestly on the miraculous moments found in the daily experiences of human life. Time and time again, these poems illuminate the cycles of human interaction alongside the slow-moving patterns of nature: bark just separating / after nine thousand summers. A speaker asks, Is everything too old or too new and the resounding answer is that its a bit of both. Colorless birds, a deep sweep of wind, and arrowheads found in a dying red oak all point to fragmented moments that make up what it means to stitch ones life together. Attentiveness is my best friend, a speaker remarks offhandedly, but this affair with observation is earnest and real. Skin rewards the reader through a tacit understanding that everything in life is part of something larger that we cant see: the endless thoughts that slide / Into notice where In the chill of privacy / One seeks promise.Adam Clay

Author Bio

Robert VanderMolen is the author of twelve collections of poetry. He has been publishing poetry since the mid-1960s. His poems appear regularly in periodicals such as the London Review of Books, Grand Street, Parnassus, Poetry, Epoch, Michigan Quarterly Review, Bald Ego, and Saint Ann's Review. He lives and works in Grand Rapids, Michigan.