Skinny Girls

Deborah Dowson is a children’s librarian in Pickering, Ontario.

Women in relationship with parents, siblings, friends, and lovers form
the focus of this collection. The opening section, titled “Skinny
Girls,” tells a story of childhood and adolescent pain. In the
startling opening poem, a small child drowns inches from where his
parents sit talking and dangling their legs in the water: “One of the
hands floated to the closest leg— / still laughing towards the man /
she almost brushed the touch away.” In “The Picture,” a 7-year-old
blames herself for having been sexually molested by her dance
instructor: “Dancing made this happen / I am bad for these plies.”
This section also addresses, without sentimentality, the pain of
anorexia nervosa.

The book shifts from personal memories and observations to poems based
on biography and art. One of the speakers is the artist Camille Claudel,
who eventually wound up in an asylum, after her breakup with Rodin. Each
section in this collection, in fact, contains poems dealing with
absence, separation, unfulfilled and unrequited love. The dominant
imagery is organic, even in the poems based on art. Orange, plum, lilac,
lavender, and peach color and scent the images of love’s fleeting
presence.

Skinny Girls presents an intimate portrait of emotional experience that
is tempered with intellectual discipline and maturity.