Skin

The final collection of poems from a master of his craft, “Skin reflects earnestly on the miraculous moments found in the daily experiences of human life” (Adam Clay, author of To Make Room for the Sea).

Time and time again, Robert VanderMolen’s poems illuminate the cycles of human interaction alongside the slow-moving patterns of nature: “bark just separating / after nine thousand summers.” A speaker asks, “Is everything too old or too new?” and the resounding answer throughout Skin is that it’s a bit of both. Colorless birds, “a deep sweep of wind,” and arrowheads found in a dying red oak all point to fragmented moments that make up what it means to stitch one’s life together. “Attentiveness is my best friend,” a speaker remarks off-handedly, but this affair with observation is earnest and real.

Skin rewards the reader through a tacit understanding that everything in life is part of something larger that we can’t see: the endless “thoughts that slide / into notice” where “in the chill of privacy / one seeks promise.”

“An assembly of poems that are intricate and sturdy, woven with well-chosen strands of candor . . . The result is a work of abundant pleasures, a testament to art as affirmation of human life.”—Publishers Weekly

“Some of the most surprising, original poems in the American pantheon. You won’t hear any of the usual notes in these pages, won’t sense the prevalent gestures. Though written by one of our most accomplished, these new poems contain the freshness of dawn-met birdsong, of ‘something that rises up / Out of the murk of sleep and turns true.’ Gorgeous, mirror-polishing poems.” —Chris Dombrowski, author of Body of Water