Floyd Skloot

Tonight I trekked downtown with Courtney, Christa, and Jenn to hear Floyd Skloot at another River City Writer's Series event. I liked the atmosphere of the art gallery as the setting for the reading, except it was really cold and Wendy wouldn't serve me wine. But after hearing Floyd's work, I was really intrigued by some of his pieces. I normally don't like poetry very much so when he started out by reading some of his poems, I wasn't really that interested. I just find myself not being able to connect with poems because once you get into them, they're over. I did like his last poem though. It was a love poem for his wife which I thought was really kool. I love seeing older people that still are completely in love with their spouse. The poem talked about how the cells in your body are always changing, so his skin is not the same as the first time they touched, but he still remembered how that felt. And so on...I though it was really cute.

He then went on to read a non-fiction piece of work and also a fiction piece. I usually find myself enjoying non-fiction as opposed to fiction, but tonight was different. I didn't find his non-fiction piece all that relatable or really interesting to me. However I felt really connected to his fiction piece once he introduced it. He told us the background of the piece was what started out as a memoir of his parents and how they met, why they married, and why they stayed together when it was obvious they despised each other. I always think the same thing about my parents. All they do is fight. Every sentence out of one of their mouths is a sarcastic comment or arguement towards the other. He told us though that he didn't know much about his parents' history, with his father having died when he was 14 and his mother with Altzheimer's, so he made it a fiction piece where he could make up a logical past that might have been similar to theirs. I really found it interesting and enjoyed the images that his work portrayed. He talked about them going rowing out on a lake and I could picture the boat and the oars.

I really enjoyed listening to Mr.Skloot's readings. He seems to be a man that has overcome a lot in his life. He told us of how he contracted a viral disease 20 years ago that affected his brain and his ability to perform tasks that are a part of everyday life. He had to re-learn how to read and because of the illness he had to learn a new technique for his writing. Because of this, he said he became a better writer. I liked it when he said that because it backs up my thought that everything happens for a reason. It might have seemed at the time that this disease would have been life-shattering, but he turned it in to something amazing. His story was very inspiring to me. I'm really glad I could go and hear him read. I'm looking forward to the next reading.