Rough Day

by Ed Skoog

Overview

Composed during long walks throughout Washington, DC, and careful to err on the side of recklessness, Rough Day finds its essential unity in a fixation on American events and landscapes—from Yellowstone and New Orleans to Kansas and the Pacific Northwest. Throughout, Ed Skoog maintains an openness to discovery that unveils rare and prismatic views into his country.

A native of Topeka, Kansas, Ed Skoog's first book of poetry, Mister Skylight (Copper Canyon Press), was published in 2009. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review. He teaches at the University of Montana and lives in Missoula, Montana

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619320321
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	06/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	828 KB

About the Author

Ed Skoog: Ed Skoog was born in Topeka, Kansas, and earned his MFA at the University of Montana. His first book, Mister Skylight (Copper Canyon), was published in 2009. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among other publications, and earned the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award, the Faulkner’s Marble Faun Prize in Poetry, a fellowship with Bread Loaf, and residencies with George Washington University and the Richard Hugo House. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Table of Contents

1

What's in these books that have come to me 3

A mile outside of Yellowstone 4

What is silence for 5

Rage: after the funeral 6

Our bare brief jeweled guitar 7

You might have to 8

What my mother loves is solitaire 9

Light chores between first and second sleep 10

Ice recoils tonight from marshes 11

Meanwhile I am preparing 12

Some parts of speech are harder to draw 14

One time I fell down got cut 15

2

At times I want to walk off the set of my body break my name and burn it 19

Midnight radio from Astoria plays funk 20

Let me try this clumsy again at dawn 21

The historical marker is a form of guilt 22

The condo held the rock star's body like a puppet 24

I haven't ruined my body yet with joy 25

Whatever I have been doing all my life I am doing now 26

I'll try to stop singing 27

When word comes the emperor of the world has died 28

No longer a kid I have come to the grave 29

You were beside me at the start of this 30

On river road the moon suspends 31

3

When I land and get in the taxi 35

Outside my apartment 36

Affixed to upper balconies of the World Bank 37

I'm in Washington and 38

Like a die that is only real every sixth throw 39

Grizzled countenance of morning 42

I am a child of ghosts 43

His grin's upside-down police cruiser 44

Each friendly encounter is a basement 45

I write her name on every napkin 46

Money is a bandage where above the oak 47

4

My mother is a ferocity on the Hilton Hotel roof 51

By now the hospital has unfolded 52

I am an event in my sudden willed loner's mute drama 54

Last light of summer glints off the motorcade 55

The stoned guy from the first floor 56

How we tear the billboard down is how we tear the house down 57

John Donne was dean of St. Paul's 58

I hear that people are dying in America with the very 59

It is the reverse of everything 60

A dying man is almost grown 62

After the matinee I feel acutely 63

My name's in the forest 64

5

From inside the secondhand store I admire 69

In the industrial kitchen I take red debris from the dish 71

In salmon silence of nineteen 72

Cottonwoods parse their shadows along the river 74

The grill is wrapped tight against the autumn sprinkler 75

Above the canal tonight by the willow overhang 76

These on the other hand are orderly 77

The old man we pick up in Browning 78

It was my blanket first and she took it 79

A train runs late through my arms 80

Ospreys nest their rising dollars upright 81

At the western outfitters the clerk 82

About the Author 85

Editorial Reviews

In tough-edged, hardscrabble, but rich, gleaming language, Skoog (Mister Skylight) delivers a picaresque that takes readers across the American landscape, far from the upscale confines of East Coast-West Coast cities. "This is a good knot for holding a horse/ and this is the desert's smell after a good rain," he observes in one poem that contemplates mortality—his and that of entire species. Elsewhere, "grizzled countenance of morning// leers in the apartment's slotted blind," "skateboarders [are] propelled by car mirror," "snowdrifts surrender broken branches," and "the stoned guy from the first floor// enunciates the broadcast in sterling," as Skoog pulls us into all sorts of unexpected but fully rendered settings. (Occasionally, there's an overload of detail.) Throughout, Skoog affectingly captures the feel of an unpolished, sometimes down-and-out America, but his poems aren't just (un)pretty pictures; he's here to contemplate connectedness and meaning, the relentless lure of history and the unshakable power of books. If he makes the world seem very, very real, he can also turn beautifully meditative, caught in his "sudden willed loner's mute drama." VERDICT This Lannan Literary Selection is recommended for most readers, especially those interested in visiting a larger America.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal