Henry Taylor

Although he is best known as a poet, Henry Taylor is also an astute critic, as the essays in this discerning collection demonstrate. In Compulsory Figures, Taylor writes about seventeen contemporary poets, much of whose work, he says, has been a part of his mental landscape since he himself began to write poetry. The pieces were written, and most of them published, over an extended period of time; as a whole, the collection reveals Taylor's profound respect for craftsmanship and for the distinct terms on which different poems must be taken. His concern is as much with the process of creating a poem as it is with the poem itself. Taylor's interests range from traditional verse to startling experiments with newer forms. Several of his subjects are among the best-known poets of the past twenty-five years; a few are better known as writers of prose than of poetry. Some have long been admired by only a select few, but Taylor's concern is less with reputation than with an individual poet's ways of engaging our attention and emotions. Each essay is a meditation on a substantial portion of a poet's body of work, its evolution and its contribution to the art. Taylor writes about the contrasts between memories of a rural childhood and a lifetime of reading and learning found in Fred Chappell's impressive oeuvre and the merging of personal history with social and political history in the work of Gwendolyn Brooks. In May Sarton's poetry he finds a concern with both human and literary development, and he notes the profound wit, neoclassical attention to form, and generous erudition of David R. Slavitt's poems. He considers the skillful and serious experimental poetry of Jackson Mac Low and the deftness of form and tone in William Jay Smith's work. Others whose poetry he discusses are Anthony Hecht, J. V. Cunningham, Louis Simpson, John Woods, Robert Watson, Brewster Ghiselin, William Stafford, George Garrett, William Meredith, John Hall Wheelock, and James Wright. These essays represent an informed and sensitive discussion of the state of recent American poetry. Throughout, Taylor's easygoing patience and clarity of style are at the service of the reader, the poems, and the poets.

This collection of twenty-four poems reveals the range and power of a young Southern poet whose work is characterized by a tensile strength and a coldly factual style which beneath the surface carries great passion. Some of the poems masterfully employ twists of irony; others utilize grotesque, yet real, characters and situations; others are nimble parodies. All of the poems, however, proclaim Taylor's sensitivity to the rhythms and idioms of everyday speech. All touch the unusual, the comic, the despairing, the hopeful. These, then, are distinctive poems about man and his condition, informed by reality and by a simple but powerful expression.

Henry Taylor's poems in The Flying Change embrace a wide range of subjects and tones. Taylor's concern with the rural anecdote, demonstrated in his two earlier books of poetry, The Horse Show at Midnight and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards, is here broadened to include not only funny stories called ""snapshots"" but also extended meditations on change and death. Several of these poems take up the dark themes of the world's randomness and our helplessness in the face of unforseen disasters. In ""Landscape with Tractor,"" the mundane task of mowing a field is interrupted by the discovery of a decaying corpse. In other poems Taylor treats similarly macabre situations with an undertone of dark humor, as when he writes of inviting the lightning in while bathing during a thunderstorm. Throughout, Taylor combines everyday speech with careful control of form. In the title poem, ""The Flying Change,"" he explores the equestrian term literally and metaphorically.but for a moment the shifting world suspends its flight and leans toward the sun once more, as if to interrupt its mindless plunge through works and days that will not come again. I hold myself immobile in the bright air, sustained in time astride the flying change. The poems in this collection are sometimes disturbing, sometimes gentle and peaceful. They are all the work of a poet who writes carefully and thoughtfully.

Henry Taylor's poems in The Flying Change embrace a wide range of subjects and tones. Taylor's concern with the rural anecdote, demonstrated in his two earlier books of poetry, The Horse Show at Midnight and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards, is here broadened to include not only funny stories called ""snapshots"" but also extended meditations on change and death. Several of these poems take up the dark themes of the world's randomness and our helplessness in the face of unforseen disasters. In ""Landscape with Tractor,"" the mundane task of mowing a field is interrupted by the discovery of a decaying corpse. In other poems Taylor treats similarly macabre situations with an undertone of dark humor, as when he writes of inviting the lightning in while bathing during a thunderstorm. Throughout, Taylor combines everyday speech with careful control of form. In the title poem, ""The Flying Change,"" he explores the equestrian term literally and metaphorically.but for a moment the shifting world suspends its flight and leans toward the sun once more, as if to interrupt its mindless plunge through works and days that will not come again. I hold myself immobile in the bright air, sustained in time astride the flying change. The poems in this collection are sometimes disturbing, sometimes gentle and peaceful. They are all the work of a poet who writes carefully and thoughtfully.