Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The confessional and historical poems in Taylor's debut chronicle family history that traces her ancestry to Thomas Jefferson in precisely devised lyrics. Through their close attention to the texture and sound of language, the poems negotiate personal and public history as well as poetic inheritances: "I have one word in their dialect: stime./ Long-ah, half-rhyme with steam, its meaning: not enough," and elsewhere, a sprung consonance, "winds/ hold renegade voices: fugitive/ of the ravenous grave./ Roving, grieving, a confederate cry." The speaker often adjoins landmarks and conflict-rich territories: "My parents had already made my life// near the mass grave/ of hundreds of Revolutionary soldiers,/ a cockeyed brownstone full of junkies..." Taylor's occasional borrowing from other poets further layers her consideration of national and poetic legacy. "Hopkins in Winter" begins: "Grandma taught me 'It is Margaret we mourn for.'/ I watch her sleep, catheter wobbling." By evoking literary figures, the poems also take on a playful dimension, an approach to heritage that aims to keep the dead alive through writing: "Thoreau listens to the train at night,/ traveling with it in mind as our stewardess arrives with pretzels... I order tomato juice. He calls a mosquito a siren." Though history and memory are treated with earnestness and exactitude, Taylor's delight in language keeps the poems fresh and surprising. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In her debut collection, following receipt of the Poetry Society of America's chapbook fellowship, Taylor explores one family's past in some fine historical poems, several containing "found" lines (from the will of the speaker's ancestor and a Jefferson-era housewife's list, for instance). On slave ancestors, he writes, "Light gilds granite stones. Winds / hold renegade voices fugitive," while Jefferson is admonished that he has "two families:/ legitimate & illegitimate,/ two rivers proceeding out from you." Taylor explores the African American part of Jefferson's family, which was burdened with Jefferson's debt but not his fame. Also included are poems of place, including some about smaller California cities. When wedded to history and nature, Taylor's work connects emotionally: "Coffins built/ in the Susquehanna foothills of the forever mountains." Occasionally, some poems veer toward flat endings or awkward phrasing-"Just before Exit 67, purple clouds heap up"-but Taylor's powers of description are usually deft. VERDICT This first collection reveals a poet with a fully formed voice and involving subject matter ("You came/ in ripped jeans from California and tasted// their seed, their curd, their underworld of 80 proof."), and the genealogy she presents provides a rare view of our history, deepened with mystery.-Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
