Thin Matter
by Alifair Skebe
Original cover art by the
author.
2017
Available at http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2017/skebe.html
ISBN: 978-0-921053-42-2
Retail price: $16 USD
79 pages
Genre/subgenre: Poetry
FootHills Publishing
PO Box 68
Kanona, NY 14856
Promotional Information for Thin Matter:
Interview with Charlie Rossiter on Poetry Spoken Here, November 2016
Episode 033: Alifair Skebe
and Rita Dove
Alifair Skebe from Albany,
New York, explains the subtleties of elliptical poetry and provides a few
examples from her just-published book, Thin Matter. In the second part of
the show, host Charlie Rossiter discusses former poet laureate Rita Dove's
recently published, Complete Poems: 1974-2004.
What Others Are Saying:
Poetry's
no spectator sport. What is written in these poems, Skebe works equally as hard
at what's not written, so that you, the reader, must bring
your
[ ] to them
as
light through a gap in the floor.
From
their bottoms up, each poem creates the double world of an hourglass.
—Craig
Czury, author of Thumb Notes Almanac
Perhaps
all matter is thin: permeable, fragile, fleeting. Alifair Skebe cuts in to the
fabric of matter, not to find a slice of life but to reach a vast opening.
Charles Olson wrote, “any of us, at any instant, are juxtaposed to any
experience, even an overwhelming single one, on several more planes than the
arbitrary and discursive which we inherit can declare.” Skebe embraces those
planes, wherein she is “poised in the balance/between is and being.” She
discovers “no past—there is none/no past—I have none/all is here, you see.” A
favorite poet of hers, Muriel Rukeyser, wrote that poetry is an art enabling us
“to understand, in the glimpse of a moment, the freshness of things and their
possibilities.” Throughout Thin Matter the freshness of things
and moments vibrate; and in the final poem of the volume, Skebe lacerates a
world wherein depleted uranium sinks into groundwater, offering instead:
Forget
your pretenses
these
poems are angry poems, sad poems,
fighting
for their lives poems,
cannot
be read as abstract poems or
tired
image-driven poems,
don’t
give them Wellbutren poems
or
life-support.
These
poems have concussions.
—David
Landrey, author of Consciousness Suite
Recent Appearances:
Inner Ear Poetry Series,
Buffalo, New York, August 2016
New World Writers Series,
Woodstock, New York, November 2016
Huntington Poetry Series,
Long Island, New York, November 2016
The Cheese Traveler, Albany,
New York, December 2016
Zinc Bar Series, Manhattan,
New York, December 2016
Great Weather for Media
Series, Poetry Lounge, Manhattan, New York, December 2016
Sample Poems from Thin Matter:
By the Riverbank
rivulets snake through the
mind
like words like
sand
turning lines of verse
in linear time
undulating
reeds bend at a safe distance
from the edge
some
growing against the current
words take courage
and crumple it up like an old
paper bag
down in the river below
Mother curled her cursive
O’s in grade school
courage takes words
to make deeds
follow me down the riverbank
and we’ll put a few words
together
Desire
Every corner is a detour
a knife in the air
a cut against time
before sharpening
holding space in between
the blade before a cut
alternate lines meet
the blade against fruit
into
the corner of thought
or vegetable
each moment severed
to make neat slices
becomes more human
quivering hands
a choice not taken
precision
“I am afraid of myself”
the arc of a blade
charting
the infinite
parallelogram
rhombus, perpendicular lines
tucked away
we all have
separate selves
lives kept secret
The Seed
asleep at rest
composed
sweet small salient
kinetic drop of life
in a little pod
cold
to make hearty
heart to
make strong
intense
to put out to set
tension
energy movement
a stirring
in – tension
poised in the balance
between is and being
in tend to tend
sweet song
blessing
my love my love
to make
good
to grow
white roots of peace
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