Kafka's Shadow by Judith Skillman 78 pages 46 poems ISBN: 978-0-9975051-4-6 Publication date: February 1, 2017 Price: $16.95 Publisher: Deerbrook Editions To Order ABOUT THE BOOK: Kafka's Shadow takes the reader through Franz Kafka's life (1883‐1924) from child hood through adulthood, as he came of age under his authoritarian father, Hermann, who desired that Franz become entrepreneurial and insensitive‐in short,a replica of himself. Themes include Kafka's desire to escape from the "milieu," and to experience life apart from a suffocating domesticity. These poems explore Kafka's provocative style and relentless drive to write, as well as his illness, fragility and, ultimately, his inability to marry for fear of losing his raison d'etre‐which was, of course, writing. I have been drawn to Judith Skillman's work for three decades, ever since her first book, Worship of the Visible Spectrum. In her latest volume, she inhabits the mind of Franz Kafka, as well as some of those who loomed large in his life: family members, would-be sweethearts, his editors. We thus see the world in the outré, off-kilter way that Kafka seems to have‐as if the lenses of his eyes worked differently than most people's, letting in a light that few can focus. In Kafka's Shadows he sees edges that,others don't, edges that cut him off from taking part in "normal" life‐pleasing his father, marrying, performing work that others consider productive. Skillman's use of internal rhyme in many of these poems exemplifies how Kafka's world, while being initially recognizable as our own, resonates on another frequency, bringing music sharp and unfamiliar to our ears. This book gives us a deeper knowledge of Kafka as a person and artist, of his times and difficulties in finding his place. Though he loved peonies, we see the thistles that grew around him. ‐Michael Spence, Umbilical, winner of The New Criterion Poetry Prize ADVANCE PRAISE Reading Skillman's poems, I felt more acutely my own desire to be fully alive, the pressing realities of beauty and loss. ‐John Amen, Editor of The Pedestal Magazine Skillman bends and breaks standard syntax and meaning as she employs impressive vocabulary, narrative, and imagery for her own purposes, mining the hidden regions of dreams, myth, culture, and memory. She mixes a sliver of pain, a kernel of tenderness, a twist of satire, perversity, and bitterness, creating from it all a potent sauce of raw truth. ‐Ann Wehrman, Reviewer, The Pedestal Magazine . . . readers will encounter the intelligence and honesty of the real thing. ‐Brendan Galvin . . . Skillman's ability to accommodate multiple meanings in even the most seemingly straightforward of sentences is like being pushed by a doppelganger who insists we jump beyond obvious interpretations. ‐Christianne Balk, The Holding Hours, UW Poetry Series ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Judith Skillman, MA English, is the author of sixteen collections of poems and a how to, Broken Lines‐The Art & Craft of Poetry (Lummox Press), the recipient of an award from the Academy of American Poets for her book Storm (Blue Begonia Press). Her work has appeared in FIELD, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Zyzzyva, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Authors, and elsewhere. She has been a Writer in Residence at the Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, Washington, and The Hedgebrook Foundation. Her collaborative translations have appeared in Northwest Review, Kalyna Review, and Ezra. Skilllman currently teaches at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle. FROM THE BOOK The Cauliflower by Judith Skillman He'd tried before, gutting the thick stem from the white meat with his mother's butcher knife, carving away at leaves the same color as the moon that shone when he walked alone at night, up those avenues mapped with her, his beloved, the one with whom he'd spend his life. Children? They would come after wedlock, when, to avenge his father, he could become a father. Steam fogged his glasses inside the garret-sized kitchen, where he holed up with his prize, this dish to please her, if her were every woman in his life‐the sisters, especially them. Cheese clung to his fingers, half-melted as the tears a boy couldn't cry came into his eyes, whet the skin of cheekbone, dried there. This time the cruciferous would give way beneath teeth used to having or not having‐as if the two states, to want or not to want‐ could live apart from one another.
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