Sherry Chandler

Braintree

For decades now, Richard Taylor, from his seat in the state’s capitol, has provided a strong center of gravity for the literary community in Kentucky. He does this, with characteristic humility and grace, through his teaching at Kentucky State, his work as Poet Laureate, his poetry-friendly independent bookstore Poor Richard’s, and his First Friday readings that provide a venue for writers established and emerging.

Quietly, in the midst of all his generous activity, Richard has also produced a considerable body of work.

Braintree, the work I want to consider today, is a chapbook of 15 poems published in 2004 by Scienter Press. The poems are quintessential Taylor, apparently folksy, maybe a bit rambling, but with a turn near the end that home in on the question. Taylor holds an JD and it might not be stretching the point too much to say his poems are like a well-crafted argument to the jury in a prosody as low-key as the man himself.

Or one long ars poetica. Consider “In Defense of Letters:”

From his farm near Braintree, John Adams
wrote that unless he kept a journal
the events of his life passed like flights
of birds across his vision, leaving no trace…

Because the book’s title is taken from this poem, it would seem to set us up for a meditation on writing or on recording days that are like

…
Thirty-four pigeons I count huddled along the
twin power lines that droop and join
at the river’s edge. They remind me of fonts

of type lifted from the printer’s tray…

My own favorite in this line is “Cattle Song,” built on the epigraph “Nathan Banks, a 22 year old student…painted single words on the flanks of about 60 cows…then let them wander around to see if they could compose poetry.”

Outside my window I see lettered angus
on the hillside composing pastorals,
cantos to clover, a haiku whose theme
this July morning is sweet surrender
to the dark cove of an encompasssing oak,
a deep draught of rainwater in a silver tank…

Braintree is a pretty little book, saddle-stapled with a cover illustration from a woodcut Richard himself did, perhaps in

Wood Engraving Workshop

Huddled over work tables,
we scratch at boxwood blocks,
trying to coax a likeness of this world from wood.
…
Mine is the failed farmstead
choked in its noose of weeds
flooded in a sea of stipples and checks.

An unseen farmer, trapped in the barn…

A bargain at $8.50, you will have hours of pleasure returning again and again to these quiet pieces.

Wind Publications has done us all the great service of re-releasing Richard Taylor’s Girty. Richard will be reading Friday night, February 10, at the Carnegie Center here in Lexington, along with Laverne Zabielski (Garden Girls) , Frederick Smock (Poetry and Compassion), and Joe Anthony (Peril, Kentucky). Festivities begin at 6:30.

Possibly related posts:

Reminders

One last First Friday reminder

Kentucky’s Civil War

Poets Laureate

Diane Gilliam receives Chaffin Award

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