Deerbrook Editions

There is something about these pieces that is chill without being icy or bitter, wise without being cynical, and as striking as slanted autumn light glimpsed through tree branches.

— The Pedestal Magazine

Judith Skillman takes up again the tools of naturalistic observation and mythical allusion to examine difficult truths about the interior life of the self and its drives toward intimacy and seclusion, eroticism and entropy, as well as the paradox and complexity inherent in familial relationships. Skillman's tone is occasionally lofty but most often direct, incisive, unflinching.

— Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom, The Iowa Review

Skillman's world is strangely fluid, yet layered with complexities that complement one moment and subtly contradict the next…

—Katherine Soniat, author of Bright Stranger & The Swing Girl

I believe it was Rimbaud who said that genius is the ability to recall one’s entire childhood. Whether or not Judith Skillman can recall her entire childhood I cannot say, but what she does recall—and it’s a great deal—she turns into poems of compelling and aching urgency. Came Home to Winter is populated with seamlessly crafted poems not only born of memories of childhood and youth but of the natural world, of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and of the sorrows and joys of life lived now. This collection is another brilliant milestone in a long and distinguished journey through poetry.

—J.R. Solonche, author of Beautiful Day