“There was this air, this light, a day of thorough and forgetful happiness . . .”

How many Pulitzer-Prize winning poets write about happiness? I can think of only one, Henry Taylor, who is considered by some critics to be “deliberately, determinedly unfashionable.” Why? Perhaps it is because his “technically well-ordered style and leisurely reflections of life” (which are comparable to Robert Frost’s work) are “now … Read More

“. . . and I doze here, dreaming that something lies under a suburban lawn, waiting to change my life . . .”

Henry Taylor’s poem “The Muse Once More” continues: “…to draw me away from what I chose too long ago to forsake it now on some journey out of legend, to smuggle across the world’s best-guarded borders this token, whatever it is, that says I have risked my life for this … Read More

“Tonight the windows hold all light inside: they fold it back on walls…

Taylor Henry cropped. . . and spill gold over things that tell us who we are.”  This is from “Learning the Language”  by Henry Taylor. It’s a beautifully constructed poem that follows strict rules of rhyme and meter. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, his love of form was … Read More