Knute Skinner
Knute Skinner Poems
Go, take the path
that leads down by wooded ways
and beyond to the river.
...
I shudder thinking
of the cold Irish earth.
The firelighter flares
...
Not my father but my mother.
That's who you see on the footpath,
holding my hand while I look at the bears.
...
'You're plying me with drink,' I say,
looking into my second glass of Smithwicks,
sitting at Tim Murphy's bar
...
In the city of Waterford
a fifteenth-century mayor,
prosperous at the fairs
...
The planet that we plant upon
rolls through its orbit of the sun,
bending our grass upon the breeze.
...
Your lonely hill was dear to you, as was
The hedge which masked your view of the horizon.
I read your words here in my home in Clare
...
'She's back again?'
'She is,' he answered, crossing to the locker
and rummaging for his boots.
...
"My other shoe's got to be somewhere," she said,
"or does this bed of yours eat them up?"
I watched her head disappear-
...
Knute Skinner Biography
Knute Skinner was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in nearby Webster Groves. He attended college at Culver-Stockton and at the University of Northern Colorado, where he received a BA in speech and drama. He then did graduate work at Middlebury College and at the University of Iowa, where he was also an instructor in the English Department. His first book of poetry, Stranger with a Watch, appeared in 1965 and contained early poems written in Iowa. His second collection, A Close Sky over Killaspuglonane (1968), showed the influence of the people and the landscape of rural Clare. Since then, he has published eight more books and six chapbooks. His poems, which have appeared widely in serial publications in Ireland, England, Australia and North America, show a variety of styles, including both free and formal verse. Two collections, The Bears and What Trudy Knows, demonstrate a marked departure from his usual lyric mode, as the poems are all fictional narratives highlighting brief moments in the lives of the imagined narrators. In 2007 Salmon Poetry brought out a collected edition, Fifty Years: Poems 1957-2007 and in 2010 Salmon published a memoir, Help Me to a Getaway. In 2013 a new collection, Concerned Attentions, appeared from Salmon.)
The Best Poem Of Knute Skinner
The River
Go, take the path
that leads down by wooded ways
and beyond to the river.
Pass through the wooded ways
with trees full of squirrels,
with grass full of snakes,
and arrive at the river.
Once there, you can stand
or sit on a fallen tree trunk
and look at the river.
You can watch the slow, steady course
of muddy brown water
as it takes a deliberate route
toward the bend in the river.
There'll be much to see on the water.
Leaves, broken-off branches,
and perhaps an occasional bottle
or unidentified scrap
will float into your vision.
They'll record the river's calm movement
before they pass out of sight.
You can stay there as long as you want to,
watching the river,
and you can leave when you want to.
The river won't mind.
When you do venture again
on the path through the wooded ways,
the river will be there.
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