White Boys From Hell - Softcover

Skinner, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936196972 ISBN 13: 9781936196975

Publisher: C&r Press, 2019

Synopsis

Everyone knows you don’t talk about the elephant in the room. But, what if you are the elephant in the room? White Boys from Hell files a report on the position of the straight white male in current American culture, a position fraught with contradiction and confusion. It does so without resort to the diction of the academy, or any lens applied in detachment, but, rather: from the inside out. In poems that address relations between men and women, men and other men, and men and the larger world, notions such as “masculinity,” and “toxic masculinity” are considered by the voice of poetry, which, in Robert Pinsky’s use of the phrase, means “something quite literal and practical.” Granted, these are the poems of one person (elephant?) only, but the voice is compelling, the vision clear-eyed, rending, and urgent.

About this title

Review:

Jeffrey Skinner’s title White Boys From Hell should not be understood so much as an identity but as the location from which he speaks. As he states in “The Nighthawk,” he is going “back to warn the guy I used to be.” This collection is a series of investigations into the many shapes we see ourselves having taken in retrospect, and an even more thorough examination of the shaping influences. In the end, Skinner achieves his goal: even if the soul he drags back from the abyss is a little torn, it remains whole.
–Cate Marvin

These remarkable poems manage to sound the depths of at least two vital oceans: the present and the past. As we witness cultural shifts that empower “women [to] call out the men / and rightly so,” Skinner’s speaker undertakes a harrowing, deeply personal journey through representations of American masculinity. His investigations yield truths both toxic and sweet. In one poem, fathers appear with troubling gifts: “sidelong Irish grins” and hunting advice meant for another time. In another, the speaker’s current and former selves meet in the landscape of Hopper’s Nighthawks, but can’t connect. These poems fess up to pain–the struggle to live up to externally-imposed definitions of gendered selfhood, and the battle to extricate oneself from internalized bias. These poems show us what happens when we keep asking ourselves difficult questions: we become wilder, yes, stranger, yes, and, finally, free.
–Kiki Petrosino

About this edition

• Publisher: C&r Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1936196972
• ISBN 13: 9781936196975
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 34