The Flying Change: Poems

About this book

Henry Taylors poems in The Flying Change embrace a wide range of subjects and tones. Taylors 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 worlds 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.