Poetry. Judith Skillman's HEAT LIGHTNING: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1986-2006 brings together poems from collections spanning a twenty year career, as well as new poems gathered here for the first time. Combining the domestic with the natural to produce poems both lyric and narrative in their procedures, Skillman's signature presence is everywhere evident. "By the time you get to the new work, you will, as I did...feel fortunate to have spent these hours with a poet who knows every trick in the book yet never lets on that she's doing anything other than saying what's in her heart and now yours as well"--David Kirby, from the introduction. "Judith Skillman is a poet whose mind, memory and imagination appear more compelling than the mundane realities of her life. Her poems often include a kind of arrested motion that signals the clash of domestic chores with artistic contemplation"--Madeline DeFrees.