Approaching Winter Poems

Floyd Skloot’s eighth poetry collection, Approaching Winter, evokes the fluid and dynamic nature of memory as it ebbs and floods through our daily lives. Here the real and the imagined intermingle freely: In one poem, the cry of eagles reflects the wails of an infant daughter, long since grown and gone; in another, an aging Samuel Beckett prepares to throw the first pitch at Ebbets Field.

Traveling from Portland’s Willamette River, which borders Skloot’s home, to the hushed landscapes of the afterlife, the poems in this collection acknowledge the passage of time and the inevitable darkness that lies ahead. Yet Skloot also remains attuned to the urgency of the present moment, as he admires the plumage of the local birds in the short days before their journey south for the winter. By turns whimsical and meditative, Approaching Winter gives voice to the struggle to find coherence in a fragmented world.