Risk

"Risk is a poetic autobiography played out on a kaleidoscopic panorama of history. Skeen's poems document a working-class childhood in Kentucky and Ohio, the loss of a brother, a mother's face 'as hard and bright as Formica,' and they detail the unexpected gift of a comfortable middle age in California, 'where / even convertibles make sense.' Skeen moves through the world with equal parts wariness and gratitude."

– —Gary Young

"Risk holds the details of the past up to the light of the present with an eye that rescues American life mid-century. Most importantly, each poem risks the clarity necessary to discover the meaning of who we have become."

– —Christopher Buckley