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Heart Attacks
Astronomy, archeology, biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics: the poetry of HEART ATTACKS searches each science, characterizing it, humanizing it, weaving it into the emotional cloth of a personal philosophy. More than a collection, the poems return again and again to the twists and curves in the helical shapes of the cell and the galaxy, the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. The style, too, is in motion from the formal to the colloquial: some poems of high diction, some made of slang, some shifting rapidly from statement to song. Biting social comment is relieved by a rich good humor. Each page beats with life.
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Face Value
The poems of FACE VALUE are peopled with individuals as different as Florida's late-night Radio John and Fairbanks Alaska survivor Leo Hardy. Real people abound. Burt Reynolds, a prom queen, wallflower and chaperone, two bluesey songs characterizing a singer, Richard Nixon, and yes, Ed Skellings himself with arch metaphysics and mock self-deprecation. The tones of voice in this book are as varied and as fast-changing as those who populate it. But watch out for the different values and the many faces.
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Showing My Age
Man and Society is the theme of SHOWING MY AGE In the long concluding title poem, Skellings brings together his earlier ideas about the double helix shape of DNA, arguing that the curves of the chromosome form a model for physical anatomy, the dialectic of intellect, the tension of emotion. Skellings displays his poetic maturity as well as the features of his times.
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Living Proof
celebrates the creative moments in the arts and sciences and in daily life. Individual poems treat figures as diverse as painter Vincent van Gogh and physicist Stephen Hawking. Personal lyrics, too, celebrate Skellings's own joy of knowing creative people. These poems insist and demonstrate that human empathy ought to be the aim of the imagination and that positive capability is as important as negative.
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Personal Effects
is a collection of new unpublished poems written since the publication of LIVING PROOF in 1985. Several poems speak directly to famous English poets like John Donne and W.B. Yeats, while others are reminescences of the poet's own life and times. As he has done in the past, Skellings mixes seriousness and humor together, sometimes shifting from line to line and attitude to attitude until, as Richard Eberhart once said, "Racy gifts. They hardly hold themselves down to earth."
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