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 unfavored,” according to the reviewers cited by the Poetry Foundation. They find his goal of discovering what “we used to call wisdom” to be old fashioned. As a result, his work is ignored by many, but not by this reader. I know that his poetry is what my spirit needs.
Taylor, Henry. The Flying Change. Louisiana State University Press, 1985, p. 55.