Collected Poems: 1958-1998
by Edmund Skellings
This collection presents the most compelling work of Edmund Skellings, Poet Laureate of Florida. It gathers together poems
from five books and includes a reading on compact disc of fifty
of them. A foreword by critic Donald L. Kaufmann discusses
Skellings's major themes and purposes and places him in the
tradition of contemporary American letters.
Skellings’ previously published books engage the greatest
themes of literature: man against nature in Heart Attacks;
man confronting man in Face Value; man against society
in Showing My Age. Living Proof celebrates the creative
moments in the arts, sciences, and daily life. A collection of
poems never before in print, Personal Effects, reflects
Skellings’s insistence that human empathy must be the aim of
mature imagination.
Writing and publishing for almost forty years, Skellings is
renowned for his wit, humor, and high spirits as well as his
trenchant social comment. Among the leading poets who have
praised his books, the late William Stafford wrote,
"Experiment, vigor, and independence come naturally to the
work of Skellings. He releases words into places they never
thought they'd go. . . . His iambic penslammeter is one of the
greatest things since Shakespeare loosed Puck to slink through
the King's English." Fred Chappell characterized his work as
"careful nonchalance . . . pith and vinegar."
With the customary flair of his language, these poems brings
vintage Skellings back into print. Because Skellings is one of
the finest live performers of poetry, the digital recording bound
into the book will make this a collector’s item of
remarkable value.
Edmund Skellings, Poet Laureate of Florida since
1980, is director of the Florida Center for Electronic
Communication at Florida Atlantic University, Fort Lauderdale. He
has taught in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is well known
for his award-winning animated computer poems, which have
appeared on television in Berlin, Tokyo, Madrid, Toronto, New
York, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
1998. 320 pp. 6 X 9.
Bound Audio compact disc.
ISBN 0-8130-1606-1Cloth, $29.95
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About
Edmund Skellings' poems:
"True imagination, the real flash of language, the living
rhythm."--Robert Penn Warren
"Fine timing."--Richard Wilbur
"At their best, they shine like silver in the sun."--Norman
Mailer
"Racy gifts. They hardly hold themselves down to
earth."--Richard Eberhart