Risk: (19 White Pine Press Poetry Prize)

"Risk is a poetic autobiography played out on a kaleidoscopic panorama of history. Skeen's poems document a working-class childhood in Kentucky and Ohio, the loss of a brother, a mother's face 'as hard and bright as Formica,' and they detail the unexpected gift of a comfortable middle age in California, 'where / even convertibles make sense.' Skeen moves through the world with equal parts wariness and gratitude."-Gary Young "Risk holds the details of the past up to the light of the present with an eye that rescues American life mid-century. Most importantly, each poem risks the clarity necessary to discover the meaning of who we have become."-Christopher Buckley My Brother's Trombone for Ernie The instrument didn't come naturally to him. Nothing came naturally to him, not even death. He drowned in "The Song of the Volga Boatman." "Mastodon" rolled over and refused to come to life. I had my own troubles with the cornet. If he showed warnings of the difficulty ahead, I didn't take notice. Thirteen years old, I lorded it over his twelve. I kept my instrument behind my mother's cedar chest for years until I swapped it for a Brad Krieger painting which takes my mind off that time. After he was shot, I wanted to sell his trombone or give it away or bury it with his body. What good would that have done when each time I see a paperclip I recall the sound of his breath slipping through that trombone? Tim Skeen, who won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry in 2001 for his book Kentucky Swami, coordinates the MFA program in creative writing at California State University, Fresno.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Hokoku-an Zendo The Skin under My Wedding Ring The Free Dishes in Boxes of Oxydol The Coxswain Coupons Pedagogy Nativity Scene Risk Specialist Fourth Class To Failure Heat Agoraphobia The Unfinished Forever Soldiers Awaiting Discharge The Coefficient of Friction A Palace the Reward of Bravery Starbucks Cartier-Bresson’s Photo of Matisse Pansies Peacetime Marriage A Poem Not Sanctioned by the Human Subjects… The Strange Behavior of Water Wrong Number The Airport Chapel in Baton Rouge after Katrina My Brother’s Trombone Pacemaker Ache Debt Pole Vault This Is the Picture It’ll Make You Strong Sky Bound Ministries Theosophy Fetish Death’s Younger Brother Aldo Ray Billy Goat Three Horses Skill My Brother’s Solar-Powered Calculator To Alex C., Arrested for Murder The Deal The Body Plural Driving a 1955 Buick Fake Half-Dollar The Future After the War Foreclosure Chowder Leaving ?

About the Author :
Tim Skeen: Tim Skeen, who won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry in 2001 for his book Kentucky Swami, coordinates the MFA Program in Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno. He lives in Fresno with his wife, Pam, and daughter, Iris.