T. R. Hummer Skandalon

Annotation

In Christian theology, a skandalon is a distraction from grace, a maze of error where we wander pointlessly, wasting our lives. To the ancient Greeks, a skandalon was the trigger of a trap. T. R. Hummer's labyrinthine new collection encompasses these meanings and more, as its poems take various paths -- some beguiling, some grotesque, some instructive, some opaque -- to unexpected destinations. Undergirding the collection is a series of progressive vignettes entitled "Victims of the Wedding," which follows the quarrels and couplings of a human man and woman as well as the angel and demon who observe them.Skandalon presents poems that consider the subtle, tragic, and ridiculous responses of creatures who lose themselves in a world they had wrongly imagined to be their own.