Jeffrey Skinner - Böcker

Sarah Gorham is the author of two collections of poetry, Don't Go Back to Sleep (Galileo Press, 1989) and The Tension Zone (FourWay Books, 1996). Her work has appeared widely in such places as The Nation, Antaeus, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Grand Street, The Missouri Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, and Poetry Northwest, where in 1990 she won the Carolyn Kizer Award. She has received grants from the Kentucky State Arts Council, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Delaware State Arts Council, and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, She is Editor-in-Chief and President of Sarabande Books, Inc.Jeffrey Skinner has published three collections of poetry, Late Stars (Weslyan University Press, 1985), A Guide to Forgetting (Graywolf Press, 1988) and The Company of Heaven (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992). His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Georgia Review, and Poetry. He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and several state arts councils. He is also a playwright, and two of his plays were finalists in the Eugene O'Neil Theater Conference competition. He is currently Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at the University of Louisville.

"Discipline, humility, kindness. These qualities cohere in the best mentors, bundled into an overarching approach to the art of writing. It is not, I think, coincidence that the writers in this collection remember these qualities best when speaking of their mentors as people, as fellow pilgrims who helped them on the way. In some sense, whether consciously or not, we seek out mentors who learn how to live—as an artist, and as a human being."—from the Introduction by Jeffrey SkinnerLee Martin is the author of a collection of stories, The Least You Need to Know (Sarabande, 1996), a memoir From Our House (Dutton 2000), and a novel Just Enough Haughty, also forthcoming from Dutton. He teaches in the creative writing program at the University of North Texas where he also edits the American Literary Review.Jeffrey Skinner is currently Director of Creative Writing at the University of Louisville. His published collections of poetry include The Company of Heaven (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), Late Stars (Wesleyan University Press, 1985), and A Guide to Forgetting (Graywolf Press, 1988), which was a National Poetry Series selection.Contributors include:Michael Collier on William MeredithJay McInerney on Raymond CarverTess Gallagher on Theodore Roethke and Stanley KunitzReginald Shepherd on Alvin FeinmanDana Gioia on Elizabeth BishopMaura Stanton on Vert Rutsala and John BerrymanElizabeth Graver on Annie Dillard, Angela Carter, Stanley Elkin, and othersSylvia Watanabe on Dorothy VellaDavid Huddle on Peter TaylorDavid Wojahn on James L. WhiteErin McGraw on John L’HeureuxCONTENTSPREFACE by Lee Martin, viiINTRODUCTION: The Scrupulous Philanthropy of Expertise by Jeffrey Skinner, xiMICHAEL COLLIERAn Exact Ratio, 3The Farrier, 12JAY MCINERNEYRaymond Carver: A Still, Small Voice, 15Getting in Touch with Your Child, 24TESS GALLAGHERTwo Mentors: From Orphanhood to Spirit-Companion, 39Behave, 45DAVID HUDDLEWhat about Those Good People?, 51Backstory, 57REGINALD SHEPHERDT

A private eye turned moderately successful poet leads readers on a satiric, hopeful tour of how to make a life in the arts, while still having a life. Revealing, hilarious, and peppered with sly takes on the ins and outs of contemporary American poetry (chapters include "The Silence of the Iambs," "The Revisionarium, Ask Dr. Frankenpoem," and "The Periodic Table of Poetic Elements"), Jeffrey Skinner offers advice, candor, and wit.Revision is the process a poem endures to become its best self.Or, if you are the poet, you are the process a poem endures to become its best self.Endures because a first draft, like all other objects in the universe, has inertia and would prefer to stay where it is. The poet must not collaborate.Best self because the poem is more like a person than a thing, and does not strenuously object to personification.Yo, poem.But let's not get carried away. It's your poem and you can treat it as you wish; sweet talk it; push it around if that's what it takes. Alfred Hitchcock notoriously said of the actors in his movies, "They are cattle."Jeffrey Skinner is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Salt Water Amnesia (Ausable Press, 2005). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, BOMB, and The Paris Review, and his work has earned awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Howard Foundation.