Skin: Poems

by Robert VanderMolen

Overview

The first collection in over a decade from a master of his craft, Skin reflects earnestly on the miraculous moments found in the daily experiences of human life.

Time and time again, Robert VanderMolen’s 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 throughout Skin is that it’s 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 one’s life together. “Attentiveness is my best friend,” a speaker remarks off-handedly, 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 can’t see: the endless “thoughts that slide / into notice” where “in the chill of privacy / one seeks promise.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571314949
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Pages:	104
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Scarlet Tanager: 1967 1

1

Trails 5

Indoor Plants 8

The Dagged Edge 9

The Clouds 10

Evenings & Mornings 12

Lowering A Shoulder 13

Nick's Dream 15

Woman Reading 16

Cowboys and Couples 19

Black Lake 20

Raptors 21

After The Reunion 22

The Land 23

Interlude 24

The Crack 25

Lincoln Lake 26

After The Fog 27

Spring and All 28

Miles Davis 31

On Tuesday 32

Flowers 34

2

Trains 39

Skin 40

Trees 41

Glen and Tom 43

After The Funeral 44

Friends 45

Joseph At The Lake 47

The Road To White Cloud 49

Wheels 53

A Bowl Of Fruit 54

The Watershed 56

Migrating Data 58

Ravine 60

Burning The Old Dock 61

3

Florida 65

Colors 66

The Lake 68

More Stories 69

Cicadas in July 71

A Letter 74

A Warble, A Wave 76

Trout Opener 78

In The City Park 80

The Neighborhood 81

Tracks 83

Three Things 85

Meanwhile 90

Acknowledgments 93

Editorial Reviews

07/19/2021

Vandermolen (Water) offers in this finely polished 12th book an assembly of poems that are intricate and sturdy, woven with well-chosen strands of candor: “How difficult to piece one observation/ Into the next without hyperbole or minor lie.” Composed of snippets of conversation and wisps of dreams or memories, and always introspective as they document mid-Western white masculinity at late-middle age, these poems keep company primarily with the poet himself: “In the chill of privacy/ One seeks promise.” These subtle entries are selective in what they say and don’t say, the effect being at once plaintive and endearing. The poet is willing, even eager to list his shortcomings, lapses of judgement, missed moments, outright failures: “I seemed/ To be irrelevant, as harmless as a scarecrow/ Dripping straw,” or “I wish I had more discipline I wanted to tell her./ I was trying to recall an anecdote to offer,/ I was close to one, I had a wisp of it/ When the doorbell rang. Someone selling Bibles.” Vandermolen’s gift for craft and discernment counteracts his tendency toward self-depreciation. The result is a work of abundant pleasures, a testament to art as affirmation of human life. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

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.” —Publisher’s 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 won’t hear any of the usual notes in these pages, won’t 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 you’re quiet, you’ll 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 it’s 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 one’s 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 can’t see: the endless ‘thoughts that slide / Into notice’ where ‘In the chill of privacy / One seeks promise.’”—Adam Clay

From the Publisher