What do you think?
Rate this book
Curios: Poems
In Curios , her first collection of poetry, Judith Taylor emerges as the speediest meditative poet since Emily Dickinson. Her poems set off for all the worthy old ontological destinations, but what new routes they discover! Taylor can cover more ground in eight lines than most poets manage in eighty. But her rapid transit is accomplished without loss of density or emotional resonance. Taylor's love of literary tales is deeply embedded in-and extended by-her poems. References to Wilde, Rilke, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Charlotte Brontë, and Lady Murasaki are rife, as are characters from fairy tales and children's stories. Even familial figures take on archetypal roles, lending the speaker's personal memory a mythic significance. The most pronounced motifs in Curios suggest a world enriched by ghosts, fans, screens, masks, silk, windows, dreams, and curtains. But Taylor makes apparent that her imagination has bloomed not only to augment but to accommodate the world's I wanted everything connected to everything in a logical universe. / . . . In time, the world begins to shape your stubborn mind. ("She's Got Mail") This debut collection is remarkable not only for its consistent style but also because it showcases a new form of poem-her own invention-a "curio" in itself. In extended lines, usually seven to eight, Taylor delivers deadpan statements and poses questions that are startlingly provocative-more like koans than interrogatives. Her poems range widely and wildly, at times taking surrealistic turns, yet they always maintain contact with the earth. It is a bonus to the reader that Taylor's grounding wire is humor. Even as the poems astonish by their swiftness, daring, and the accuracy of their surprising connections, they make us Do the stars hiss when they slash across the sky, cooling down? / Get a grip on yourself, said Mother often. ("Excess") The volume's title, Curios , is remarkably apt. With unexpected images and questions reminiscent of childhood, Taylor riddles the surface of perception. These poems prove that curiosity-and imagination-will get the best of us. This title received a grant from the Greenwall Fund of The Academy of Ameri
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
6 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Read
March 24, 2012Still one of my all-time favorite releases from Sarabande, I originally wrote about this book in 2000 for the NASHVILLE SCENE--
"Funded in part by the Academy of American Poets� Greenwall Fund, is Judith Taylor’s début volume consists of lightning-quick meditations on the feminine—its relationship to artifice (“Unnatural Fuschia�) as well as to the unimpeachably real. The collection’s final poem, “She’s Got Mail,� tells us that “Maybe the secret’s simple: let the mirror reflect whatever’s there.... In time, the world begins to shape your stubborn mind.� Taylor delights in stalking and then pouncing upon all kinds of female stereotypes"--
and while I stand by these two sentences, I retract wholly my earlier comments about “Other Than Odalisque,� which I first took to be over-reliant on clichés about Southern womanhood (never mind the fact that many have a basis in fact).
OTHER THAN ODALISQUE
I dream I'm the belle of Alabama.
My harlequin glasses look out of place with my wasp waist.
Hiyall!
I have two costume changes: Pre-War yellow, Post-War green.
Some soldier is trying to get me out of my bodice.
I rap him on his Confederacy with my silk fan.
To win my respect, he rushes away to join the Bengal Lancers.
My waist a mere seventeen inches.
Southern women are skittish, unlike those unclothed gals hanging in Father's study.
Amusing us with its riffs on belle-hood (“Hiyall!,� a requisite 17-inch waist, sexual manipulativeness, etc.), I now find the poem more than equivalent to Taylor’s witty bravado and delicious wickedness elsewhere in the book and confess she understood what even I didn't at the time.
Born in Chicago and living in Los Angeles. Taylor currently co-edits POOL (). For those of you who missed CURIOS the first time around, re-reading the book twice over the past twelve years has made me want to encourage all to order the collection directly from Sarabande, along with an anthology co-edited with Nickole Brown-- well as to look for new work from both. Taylor is "taking a lot of photographs these days," and there's an intriguing portfolio of these accompanied by new work available at those interested might also want to look at , and .
"Funded in part by the Academy of American Poets� Greenwall Fund, is Judith Taylor’s début volume consists of lightning-quick meditations on the feminine—its relationship to artifice (“Unnatural Fuschia�) as well as to the unimpeachably real. The collection’s final poem, “She’s Got Mail,� tells us that “Maybe the secret’s simple: let the mirror reflect whatever’s there.... In time, the world begins to shape your stubborn mind.� Taylor delights in stalking and then pouncing upon all kinds of female stereotypes"--
and while I stand by these two sentences, I retract wholly my earlier comments about “Other Than Odalisque,� which I first took to be over-reliant on clichés about Southern womanhood (never mind the fact that many have a basis in fact).
OTHER THAN ODALISQUE
I dream I'm the belle of Alabama.
My harlequin glasses look out of place with my wasp waist.
Hiyall!
I have two costume changes: Pre-War yellow, Post-War green.
Some soldier is trying to get me out of my bodice.
I rap him on his Confederacy with my silk fan.
To win my respect, he rushes away to join the Bengal Lancers.
My waist a mere seventeen inches.
Southern women are skittish, unlike those unclothed gals hanging in Father's study.
Amusing us with its riffs on belle-hood (“Hiyall!,� a requisite 17-inch waist, sexual manipulativeness, etc.), I now find the poem more than equivalent to Taylor’s witty bravado and delicious wickedness elsewhere in the book and confess she understood what even I didn't at the time.
Born in Chicago and living in Los Angeles. Taylor currently co-edits POOL (). For those of you who missed CURIOS the first time around, re-reading the book twice over the past twelve years has made me want to encourage all to order the collection directly from Sarabande, along with an anthology co-edited with Nickole Brown-- well as to look for new work from both. Taylor is "taking a lot of photographs these days," and there's an intriguing portfolio of these accompanied by new work available at those interested might also want to look at , and .
Read
June 9, 2016Judith Taylor, AM'63
Author
From our pages (Oct/00): "Written in extended lines, this collection of poetry explores the connections between identity, imagination, art, and love."
Author
From our pages (Oct/00): "Written in extended lines, this collection of poetry explores the connections between identity, imagination, art, and love."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.