The Snow's Music

I believe that Mr. Skloot is one of the finest lyric poets writing in English today, and that this is his best collection to date. ~Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Traveler’s Calendar

"The woods are making music of the wind," writes Floyd Skloot in "Late Autumn Air," yet another of the many elegiac pieces in this collection. Skloot mourns the passing of lives, his own, those of major figures in the world of art and literature (from Braque to Hardy), and dear ones around him. This elegiac note is not burdensome, however. Skloot writes with such affection for the world, even as it passes, that there is joy in his language, and a deep personal music that penetrates and lifts everything it touches. This is glorious poetry, and a rare accomplishment by a poet of remarkable skills, a keen ear, a fierce eye, an open heart. ~Jay Parini, author of The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems

Floyd Skloot's skill as a poet is evident poem after poem. Formal, but always fluid, the rhythms subtle, the rhymes unforced, the words take you by surprise. Read, 'Playing the Bawd at Twenty,' 'Closer to Home,' 'A Unified Field,' or 'Afterlife' and listen to the 'snow's own music,' the subtle sounds the world makes as we quietly dream and die, live and fail, mourn and love. ~Dorianne Laux, author of Facts About the Moon and Smoke