Floyd Skloot’s eighth poetry collection, Approaching Winter, evokes the fluid and dynamic nature of memory as it ebbs and floods through our daily lives. Here the real and the imagined intermingle freely: In one poem, the cry of eagles reflects the wails of an infant daughter, long since grown and gone; in another, an aging Samuel Beckett prepares to throw the first pitch at Ebbets Field.
Traveling from Portland’s Willamette River, which borders Skloot’s home, to the hushed landscapes of the afterlife, the poems in this collection acknowledge the passage of time and the inevitable darkness that lies ahead. Yet Skloot also remains attuned to the urgency of the present moment, as he admires the plumage of the local birds in the short days before their journey south for the winter. By turns whimsical and meditative, Approaching Winter gives voice to the struggle to find coherence in a fragmented world.
Floyd Skloot is the author of eight previous poetry collections, including The End of Dreams, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; The Snow’s Music; and Approaching Winter. He has won three Pushcart Prizes and the PEN USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction. He lives in Oregon.
Praise for Approaching Winter
“Skloot is above all a sympathetic poet. His measured optimism, the familiarity of his idiom, the thoughtfulness and kindness in his work animate his poems and welcome the reader.”—The Hudson Review
