cover image Chance Divine

Chance Divine

Jeffrey Skinner. Oberlin College, $16.95 trade paper (68p) ISBN 978-0-9973355-1-4

Poet and playwright Skinner (Glaciology) articulates with mixed success the elaborate mythology that American culture has constructed around various types of privilege. As the book unfolds from the book’s opening “Genesis” sequence, signifiers of wealth inhabit language that is by turns biblical and deeply personal, as in overtly autobiographical poems such as “Another Brooklyn Reading” and “My Belle Epoch.” The concern with privilege becomes a source of internal friction, beginning with the book’s ill-fitting dedication: “For all those still suffering in the streets.” The light, almost gleeful tone of many of the poems fails to do justice to the gravity of their subjects. For instance, in the closing sequence, “Revelation,” the speaker declaims that “I had a good position and a wife I loved and children and students who saw and wanted what I had,” counting the ways that fortune has been kind to him as a reminder of the arbitrary nature of privilege and circumstance. The collection often poses such questions, but it doesn’t delve deeply into the difficult and troubling answers, instead touching the “surface gently with one finger” and moving on. Skinner’s book is filled with speakers who gesture toward the privilege of others while failing to examine their own “happy indenture,” except to say, “I don’t agree with my position.” (Apr.)