The End of Dreams is a celebration of the human capacity for adaptation
amid the cycles of loss and renewal that characterize our intimate
lives. Floyd Skloot mixes dramatic monologue with meditative
and narrative verse in poems that explore family experiences,
the lives of artists, historical crisis, love, nature, illness,
and sudden, unpredictable change. The poet describes moments
rich in complexity: when a grandfather's intentional loss at
cards is really a victory of love; when Flannery O'Connor's
waxing and waning illness becomes a merciful strengthening of
her faith in death and resurrection; when dreams and reality
merge for a man in his final seconds of life. Musical, sometimes
funny, sometimes deeply poignant, twining nostalgia with a hard-earned
acceptance of the present, these accessible, emotional poems
probe the power of our transformative imagination.
Within her stillness she remembered
the first signs: that brilliant butterfly
rash on her face, a blink that lasted
for hours, the delicate embrace of sleep
veering as in a dream toward the grip
of death, hunger vanishing like hope.
Her body no longer knew her body as itself
but this too was a mercy. To leave herself behind and then
return was instructive.
To wax and wane, to live beyond
the body and know what that was like,
a gift from God, a mixed blessing shrouded
in the common cloth of loss. Half her life
she practiced death and resurrection.
—from "O'Connor at Andalusia"
Floyd Skloot has published four previous
books of poems, including Approximately Paradise, winner
of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award
and The Fiddler's Trance; three novels; and an essay
collection. His two memoirs are In the Shadow of Memory,a
finalist for a PEN American Center Literary Award and winner
of the Independent Publishers Book Award, and its sequel,
A World of Light, named an Editor's Choice by the New
York Times Book Review. He lives in Amity, Oregon. For
more information, visit www.floydskloot.com.
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