Gray Wolf press and Rain Taxi are co-sponsoring the book launch of Skirmish, poems by Dobby Gibson, this Friday, Jan. 9, 7 p.m., at Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis. The author will hand out original “fortunes” as well as read from the book, followed by a festive reception. More info is available at http://www.raintaxi.com/readings. The MOQ review of Skirmish follows.

Skirmish, by Dobby Gibson (Graywolf, $15)
In an ambling fluid meter, Dobby Gibson captures universal truths and tosses them back at us in a way that is illuminating and amusing at the same time. His quirky similes become non sequiturs that end up making sense.

For example, Chin Music describes a man missing his wife while she is out running errands, and in the process reveals the comfortable familiarity they have developed over the years: “As he sat there he realized, for the first time, their chairs didn’t match, but in a way that had always been exactly right. He wondered whether robots thought about such things. He decided they probably would be programmed out.”

Some passages read as if he is channeling Groucho Marx, but at a slower pace and with more intellectual depth. In one of several short poems titled Fortune, he writes: “The plot unfolds into mystery. / The couch unfolds into a bed.”

All told, the gentle rhythms of these poems balance their sometimes harsh realities for an effect that is both pleasing and thought provoking—S.P.