Reviewed by P. Nelson
As writers, we are all pushing product and that’s good even if at times it has horse before the cart aspects. We need first and frequently to have taken standard delivery, ( Pegasus pulling his load of aesthetic affects), to have consumed the artistic goods and to have been consumed. Many poets are diverted by the various wrappings: technical strictures, narratising authentications, sparkles of language when the purest poetic object is in its being “ a still point of the turning world.”, a composed composure. The greatest power of poetry is this of concentrating our concentration-and if the counter is made “Sure-- and so does prayer and zen” (not bad bedfellows, by the way), poetry does this in a special way, powering-up our attention at the same time it provides objects, profounder than jig saw pieces for that empowerment in a timeless circuit of feed and feedback. Which is to say. and maybe this got boring five minutes ago, lyric poems at their best are deep and deepening. They are quiet. (They do not draw attention to themselves by tripping over themselves.) This is the sterling quality of Richard Taylor’s Falling Into Bolivia. His work is carefully shaped and paced.
“The skim of algae into which /she waded to escape the heat / accepted her, pond ooze
hugging like a lethal stew.”
(For a Newfoundland Drowned in a Farm Pond)
hugging like a lethal stew.”
(For a Newfoundland Drowned in a Farm Pond)
Skim and stew are re-enforcing but the real fixer, after the lulling ordinary language of “escape the heat”, is that terrible-inevitable verb “accepting.’
And the poet must accept “that among all the sounds of late summer—
the “hum of semis along the bypass and lunch-break siren when the wind was right,” he had actually
heard “ a hoarse barking, plaintive, faint, its agony never surfacing.” and done nothing.
the “hum of semis along the bypass and lunch-break siren when the wind was right,” he had actually
heard “ a hoarse barking, plaintive, faint, its agony never surfacing.” and done nothing.
His Peaks Mill Road is perfectly observed
“In the near dark where the doe lies /(a musical, fairy tale set up)
half on, half off the road, / my headlights cone unto the survivors: /
two bucks, a spotted fawn,/ and two or three vague others.
half on, half off the road, / my headlights cone unto the survivors: /
two bucks, a spotted fawn,/ and two or three vague others.
Ears tenses, sleek heads swiveling / in the glare, hooves as lustrous,/
edged and deadly as a shot glass, they find no refuge in shadow,/
the brightness welding them together.
edged and deadly as a shot glass, they find no refuge in shadow,/
the brightness welding them together.
They do not break they do not scatter.
And to our surprise and gratification, the poem from that natural ending continues for two excellent stanzas.
If some poems are trope-ically overloaded (kayaks as relationships?), or topically conventional (prof grades papers), they are consistently sound in the units of their construction, especially the bond of noun and modifier – “heft of light” the griever’s rain of “gentle tamping, small erosions”- that ineptly fabricated, undermines so much contemporary verse. (If you can’t get noun and modifier right- all the metaphors in the world won’t save you.).
The chapbook itself, as object, is admirably low key and refined; a matte dual-tone cover, a chaste title page, good printing, a back cover of sober, uninflated blurbiage. No ribbons, no fandangles, no (ever-disappointing) author portrait.
The chapbook itself, as object, is admirably low key and refined; a matte dual-tone cover, a chaste title page, good printing, a back cover of sober, uninflated blurbiage. No ribbons, no fandangles, no (ever-disappointing) author portrait.
One of Taylor’s poems end ... “I brace to face the weather—bundled, blank, at last reduced to words.” As is the reader, in fulfillment, at end of this good book.
