Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers

by Jake Skeets

In Drift(er), Jake Skeets addresses the Richard Avedon photo that adorns the book’s cover: “to drift is to be carried by a current of air or water / but men are not the teeth / of their verbs.” Here and elsewhere in this collection, Skeets plays with whitespace, dancing across the page and crossing the spine as if it were a trespassing. Some of the poems end abruptly, mid phrase, like a signal cutting out. As in the title, the bodies of men interweave with fields and tracks and beer, and desire and loss chase each other through the pages.

Publisher
Milkweed Editions
Year
2019
Collection
Poetry
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Selected essays

Writing essays & notes

  1. An addiction

    On To Write Like a Woman and Why We Fear AI

  2. In the world

    In memory of Nevan Scott, 1985–2026

  3. There and here

    On Always Coming Home and Orality and Literacy

  4. The open universe

    On The Language of the Night and The Real World of Technology

Reading books

  1. Lavinia

    by Ursula K. Le Guin

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