Understanding Fiction: Poems, 1986--1996

By Henry S. Taylor

Book Overview

In his first poetry collection since winning the Pulitzer Prize for The Flying Change, Henry Taylor beautifully renders the vicissitudes of love, friendship, and vocation. Often using the craft of writing as a metaphor for the examined life, Taylor explores with wry wisdom the slow-dawning awareness of our evanescence. In Understanding Fiction we find gentle regret for time spent dabbling, time spent away from the work that should rightfully claim our passion. Indeed, to understand the fictions with which we cloak our endeavors is ultimately to make what peace we can with the "consequences of ignorant choices."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807121118
• ISBN13: 9780807121115
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

five months atop the throne

To say that this book has brightened my life would be only a minor understatement. Understanding Fiction is a quiet collection of poems that encourages the idea of the sanctity of life and the wonder therein. The wisdom and economy found in -NIGHT SEARCH FOR LOST DOG- cannot leave a reader unaware of his own humanity, mostly for the good. -FREETHROW- and -FOR WILLIAM STAFFORD- bring me to removed loved ones, no matter how distant they may be. Henry Taylor has my gratitude. This is a book that needs to be shared; I share it. The volume is returned to me, everytime, with a gift, small or large, marking the significance of shared exposure to truth. Read this poetry. It be good for you.

(go east coast)

Taylor's collection of poems belongs on the shelf alongside other fine collections of poems entitled Understanding Fiction.(Chorus: True dat)