The Flying Change

By Henry S. Taylor

Book Overview

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807112631
• ISBN13: 9780807112632
• Release Date: December 1985
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 55 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Powerful Stuff

Ever since the very first time I heard a poem from this collection ("Barbed Wire" specifically), I have been wowed by the weight of darkness behind all these poems. There is a great deal of power in these words and the world it portrays is far from a happy one. However, there is a real momentum and energy to everything in this book. And be warned, this collection is far from banal. From finding a dead body in a field while mowing tall grass to having a finger torn off while shoeing a horse, the poems in this book inhabit a very dark place. Much of this is tonally due to the fact the Taylor was an admitted alcoholic at the time of creation of most of these poems. His subsequent work is produced largely after his sobriety and a turn for the better in his personal life. Also, the previous reviewer might do well to note that the presence of "Airing Linen" almost cost Taylor the Pulitzer. This is largely a work of form-free emotion, artistically descended from James Dickey, and should not be expected to sing like a nursery rhyme, rather to quote "Barbed Wire" it "hums like a bowstring in the splintered air"

great book of poems

I loved every single one of the poems in this remarkable collection; it's no surprise why Henry Taylor won the Pulitzer. One reviewer made the comment that Taylor's work isn't Pulitzer material because it doesn't rhyme or something . . . That's truly misguided. Most of the poets who try to rhyme in this day and age really [bad at it] at it. I mean, that's putting it mildly. If you are a poet, or want to be a poet, my advice is: whatever you do, don't rhyme! Taylor is a great poet, and it's too bad he isn't discussed more.

A great book!

This book reveals that poetry can be both accessible and compeling. Taylor combines a conversational style with traditional poetic forms to create a contemporary style that is a true descendent of the work of Robert Frost and E.A. Robinson. Be sure and read "Landscape with Tractor", "Taking to the Woods", & "At the Swings." I highly recommend this book. And, if you haven't read poetry in years and have found the thought of it daunting, try this book as a great reintroduction, or introduction for that matter, to what poetry can offer.