Outside the Fold, Outside the Frame

(to borrow a phrase from one of the poems) and that land is full of real people(the printer, the coach, the hairdresser, even the muse is real.) It is a pleasure from beginning to end, certainly not in terms of sweetness but in texture of language and story and an internal music. I'm a librarian/poet and am often asked to recommend poetry to the uninitiated and curious. Skeen's poems are complex chords that sound simple. They chart a life, quite ordinary, quite mysterious. The poems are personal and communal and never let the reader feel left out. They are poems that you want to read out loud to someone. Poems that make you feel traveled and value your own ideosyncratic journeys. Which gives the title an appropriate irony. This is not a book to put on the shelf but one to carry around in case you need to get inside the fold.