Floyd Skloot
Floyd Skloot
Floyd Skloot is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist who has often written about the search for meaning through personal loss and the struggle for coherence in a fragmented world. Some of his work has dealt with his battle with neurological damage caused by a virushe contracted in 1988...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
CountryUnited States of America
cerebral fit instead large mit sheet spherical steven tissue
My cerebral cortex, the gray matter that MIT neuroscientist Steven Pinker likens to 'a large sheet of two-dimensional tissue that has been wadded up to fit inside the spherical skull,' is riddled instead of whole.
anxious forget likely remember
In question-and-answer sessions after a reading or during an interview, I forget the question if I'm giving too long an answer. And at the end, I can't remember any of the questions. The more anxious I am about remembering, the more likely I am to forget.
acres beverly built found immersed middle moved natural near round setting
When Beverly and I got together in 1992, and I moved to be with her in the little round house she'd built in the middle of 20 acres of woods near Amity, I found myself immersed in a natural setting that I responded to with all my being.
classical core elements formal language music poems poetry remains rhyme split though uses work
Though my poems are about evenly split between traditionally formal work that uses rhyme and meter and classical structure, and work that is freer, I feel that the music of language remains at the core of it all. Sound, rhythm, repetition, compression - these elements of my poetry are also elements of my prose.
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Through his long, productive career, Paul Theroux has mixed nonfiction books about exotic travel with novels set in exotic places. Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Honduras - he lives in and writes about places most of us never see.
home
When memories fade, can one ever really return home?
affected assault brought case central certain disorder nervous organic symptom wiped
Dementia is, after all, a symptom of organic brain damage. It is a condition, a disorder of the central nervous system, brought about in my case by a viral assault on brain tissue. When the assault wiped out certain intellectual processes, it also affected emotional processes.
dementia details knew life remember somehow
At 93, so deep in dementia that she didn't remember any details of her life, my mother somehow still knew songs.
life marked output powers slim
Flannery O'Connor's brief life and slim output were nonetheless marked by piercing powers of observation.
circuits function mind quickness
I used to be able to think. My brain's circuits were all connected, and I had spark, a quickness of mind that let me function well in the world.
beverly imagined moved
In the spring of 1993, I married Beverly and moved to the woods. This is something I could never have imagined myself doing.
novelist
Irish novelist John Banville has a creepy, introverted imagination.
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Music seems hard-wired into our very being. It moves us, stirs us to action, sets us in motion, sticks in our memories and minds.
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One of the strangest aspects of living with certain kinds of memory loss is knowing that the forgetting is happening.