All posts tagged: Ed Skoog

Justin Boening: “How To Live With Almost Nothing – Ed Skoog’s Rough Day

Rough Day Ed Skoog Copper Canyon Press, 2013 “Poetry is how to live with almost nothing,” proclaims the speaker of Ed Skoog’s wildly expansive yet personal and grief-filled second book of poetry, Rough Day. And though this idea—the belief that poetry can instruct us on how to live more attentively—may have never been rendered exactly in these terms before, the path it points toward is one we recognize. We see this kind of philosophy acted out by holy people in nearly every religion, such as nuns or monks who practice their faith primarily through abstinence. Skoog’s version of this ascetic character is a secular American one—the poet who needs little more than a book of elegies, fresh mink oil in his boots, and a sign so he might flag down his next interstate ride across the country. But the thinking that drives Skoog’s book forward isn’t always so declamatory or even imagistic. “I’m trying to find where influence end,” the speaker says. This sentence first reads like a typo. “Influence,” of course, is a singular …

The Subvocal Zoo: Episode 3 – Dorothea Lasky

Poetry Northwest‘s monthly podcast series, The Subvocal Zoo, features editors and friends of the magazine interviewing poets during the 2014 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Seattle. Each episode will feature lively conversation between writers in a different Seattle location. Episode 3 features Ed Skoog interviewing Dorothea Lasky. Their conversation takes place at the Hiram Chittenden Locks in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. It’s a typically steely Seattle afternoon. Topics of discussion include poetry in education, Shelley and Eminem, salmon ladders, and carbonated beverages. And here is a creature that will be discussed but not seen during the interview:

The Triggering Town Review

Please join us with Ed Skoog and friends for a certain-to-be-memorable two-evening run of poetry, music and performance! Where, Now? The Hugo House Theater in Seattle. When, You Ask? This weekend only. Friday August 22 and Saturday August 23 at 7:30 pm. Who Else? Sarah Galvin, Kary Wayson, Bill Carty, Sam Watts, Kevin Murphy, and more. So many more. More Information About the Event. Tickets.

Ed Skoog: “Space”

The fourth and final in our series featuring poems by Ed Skoog with photographs by J. Robert Lennon.  Read the first, and Ed’s introduction to the series, here. Space wants to be held away from its surface, between shape and place. Looking for solace, do I walk or drift? For protection, I wear a soup pot. When I call out sweet, when I try to get it alone, late and talking in the pool light glow. Across midnight’s white tile floor, like cough medicine, or the grass stains on her rugby shirt. In dark basement, saying her name toward the vernal scent of vetiver. Sacked city we are fleeing, bright on our backs. — Ed Skoog‘s first collection of poems, Mister Skylight, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2009. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and Poetry.  He has been a Bread Loaf Fellow and Writer-in-Residence at the Richard Hugo House and George Washington University.  He lives in Seattle and teaches at Everett Community College. J. Robert …

Ed Skoog: “Radial”

The third in our series featuring poems by Ed Skoog written in response to photographs by Robert J. Lennon.  Read the first, “What’s Your Beef,” introduced by the poet, here. Radial More and more the radial makes a horrible noise. My tires and I are made to the worksong noonwhistle of Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Topeka’s limited, endless grid, building two wheels into my surname rolling further from home & harangue to slash tires, shoot out lights, break into the old hospital to get high, admire the radical simplicity of whistling, which, not radial nor rubber, is air, — Ed Skoog‘s first collection of poems, Mister Skylight, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2009. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and Poetry.  He has been a Bread Loaf Fellow and Writer-in-Residence at the Richard Hugo House and George Washington University.  He lives in Seattle and teaches at Everett Community College. J. Robert Lennon is a novelist and photographer living in Ithaca, NY.  He teaches writing at …

Ed Skoog: “Dean”

The second in our series featuring poems written by Ed Skoog in response to photographs by J. Robert Lennon.  Read the first in the series, “What’s Your Beef,” with an introduction by the poet, here. Dean Less I see you through this stone, displeasure on your face as you wait for me to deliver this short curriculum in repose of armor, of landfall. Begin where we left, red world of symptom such as money and heart. In my deanship I lead a quaint faculty. Learn nothing. Threat of stone is release into the body, John Donne was Dean of St. Paul’s. Born a girl, I’d have been Pauline. It’s good to know your other name. Names are of interest. — Ed Skoog‘s first collection of poems, Mister Skylight, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2009. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and Poetry.  He has been a Bread Loaf Fellow and Writer-in-Residence at the Richard Hugo House and George Washington University.  He lives in Seattle and teaches …

Ed Skoog: “What’s Your Beef?”

Over the course of the next few weeks, as the Winter/Spring 2010-11 issue of Poetry Northwest (v5.n2) is made ready, we’ll be featuring a series of poems by Ed Skoog written in response to photographs by J. Robert Lennon. When asked bout the process of composing these poems, Ed writes that “the question on my side, once I’d agreed to the collaboration, was what form the poems would take in response to John’s photographs. He’d already taken them; I’d already admired them. The photographs were taken around Ithaca, New York, and I recognized only a few of the locations from my visits there. Here in Seattle the March through June I worked on the sequence, it was gloomy and what little light came through the leafing apple tree was lonely. These poems started spinning out from the memory of the photos rather than from direct looking. I worked on them a long time, puzzling them out, puzzling into them, and in the end took them much more seriously than I’d set out to, in order …