A new poetry collection by Deborah Landau. Through a series of poems preoccupied with loneliness and mortality, Skeletons flashes with prismatic effect across the persistent allure of the flesh. Initiated during Brooklyn's early lockdown, the book reflects the increasingly troubling simultaneity of Eros and Thanatos, and the discontents of our virtual lives amidst the threats of a pandemic and corrosive politics. Spring blooms relentlessly while the ambulances siren by.
Deborah Landau simultaneously signals these two conceits—victory over decay and the ultimate victory of decay ... Landau creates an ossuary in miniature: two skeletons per page, with each brief poem studded with death references ... These poems are conversational memento mori, sprinkled with chatty, O’Haraesque bursts right out the gate ... The surprising line breaks and enjambment teeter asymmetrically to exhilarating effect ... One pleasure of Skeletons is watching Landau switch modes of representation to describe sex.
These morbid poems are also utterly delightful….Maybe we can’t seize the day, but Landau urges us to attune ourselves, while we can, to the present moment, in all its fullness and fragility. Invoking 'grass stains, mosquito bites, biking at night,' the death-obsessed Skeletons makes us feel just how 'precarious yes exquisite' they are.
In a book coursing with energy, Landau remains in control. 'This is my fifth book of poems. I had my way with each of them.' Indeed she has! A good addition to most collections.
