To Let the Sun – John Allen Taylor (Paperback / Soft Cover)

Finalist, 2 25 Miller Williams Poetry Prize John Allen Taylor’s debut poetry collection To Let the Sun opens with an invitation both generous and resolute:”take a walk with me … I hope you’ll come / though I am going anyway.” These poems peel back the layers of recovery as an adult from childhood sexual abuse, the myriad ways a body can change to protect itself from memory, and the difficulty of looking at abuse head-on. Taylor uses a poetics of reclamation to write the child-self from a perspective beyond trauma, to document the messiness of survival, the child’s flight from himself, and the uncertain path home – to a life filled with small and perfect things. Through hermit crabs and golden pothos, fungal gnats and beet seed, the speaker reclaims himself: ‘I am not lost … I know memory / is not healed by time, but / by the oddities / with which we adorn our lives, / the fragilities we need to know / we’re needed by.

Author: John Allen Taylor
Format: Paperback / Soft Cover
Pages: 84
Size: Not Specified
Weight: Not Specified