Crooked Run by Henry Taylor

Louisiana State University Press 2006
Reviewed by Melinda Wilson

                     Bearded with Muddy Grass

Henry Taylor’s eighth book of poetry Crooked Run—the winner of the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award—both begins and ends with the speaker walking the land that his family lived on for more than four generations. The second and final poems in the book are entitled “Creek Walk.” The first details the life of animals on the land and the second details their deaths on the same, how “the open jaws might appear to say/ we all must find our hard deathbeds.” These poems sandwich the life and stories of Taylor’s family on the land and, what’s most intriguing, what happens in between.

Taylor, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his book The Flying Change, introduces his characters as if we’ve known them for years. We meet Uncle Will, the Hatchers, Mr. Clark, and William Valentine among others. Each of these characters has stories in connection with the same land. Often Taylor’s speaker talks about his attempts as a young man to impress his grandfather. The speaker is frequently self-deprecating and regretful, for example, in “Snapshots”-- “wanting, as always in his presence,/ to do right, I made some lame reply.”

Most of the stories these poems tell are funny, witty, and light-hearted, though Taylor does not shy away from revealing some darker happenings. In “Summer Hill” he tells the story of a man who allows Mr. Clark to sleep with his young daughter in exchange for money. He also takes the perspective of perhaps his Great Grandmother or a Great Aunt, and writes of the destruction of the land during the American revolution. The poem “My Dear Sister Hannah,” takes the form of a letter. The poem is full of dramatic language and at times seems self-indulgent:

            I despise the rebels more than ever

                  for causing this awful mess.

            Some weak-minded people will perhaps

                  be more [illegible] after this

Taylor’s shorter poems are often restricted by their rhyme schemes, as in “A Trace of Old Road Work,” which is made up of three rhyming quatrains. The rhymes of the first quatrain are off-rhymes and awkward compared to the final two stanzas’ perfect rhymes. The poem sets up a nice scene that speaks to the age-old battle between nature and humankind, but Taylor allows the speaker to dominate the final line of the poem, “it stands where I can show it to you still.” What makes the poem so nice prior to the last line is the near-absence of the speaker.

The longer poems, given time to fully develop, are Taylor’s most effective. The best poems in the book are those that are almost entirely imagined, as in “George Washington’s Farewell to His Hounds.” The retelling of the farewell is an obviously emotional story, but Taylor avoids melodrama by incorporating dialogue:

“I can’t help thinking he must of cast those hounds

a few times on his way up to the ferry.

Start one more fox.”

 

“Boy Hunting in Bog” is another exceptionally imaginative poem. The speaker imagines his Uncle as a boy combing through the marsh for bullfrogs and snapping turtles. The poem is emotive, but not overbearing and ends with the speaker imagining his dead Uncle as a boy:

            …I still see him walking

            with a heron’s slow stride, pure attention,

            not quite of this world, but deep in it.

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Also by Henry Taylor:

Brief Candles: 101 Clerihews

Understanding Fiction: Poems, 1986-1996

The Horse Show at Midnight and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards

The Flying Change

Afternoon of Pocket Billiards

The Horse Show at Midnight