Where Space Bends by Anique Sara Taylor

$19.99

 

Anique Sara Taylor‘s fierce wind-whipped poems pull me, drag me, shake me and make me see — seasons, oceans, stars, buds set to burst and “the universe of a single cell.” They make me feel — the joy of a deer tick tunneling in, “the wound of a new poem,” my own “nerves of scraped glass.”  She has the gift of reminding us we are alive in all our senses, and then beyond our senses, far beyond, into prayer and into the void. “Abandoning all illusion of safety,” it is “today again.”
 –Alicia Ostriker, author of The Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog, and Waiting for the Light.

 

“Maybe // this time / I will tell you as much as you can bear,” Anique Sara Taylor states, speaking as much to herself as to her readers, recognizing that she feels “Naked without my shawl of words.” In poems written in “the curved alphabet of wild phlox,” Taylor views our longings and vulnerabilities through “the unmendable beauty” of nature, reckoning “We sleep / alone so many years” toward some deeper understanding of our lives. If “Our fragile ribbons / unravel,” they do so toward “a version of Paradise / that forgives us everything we’ve ever done.” If I quote so often here from these poems, it’s because Where Space Bends is filled with such memorable and musical phrasings, and with such moving wisdom. I recommend this book to anyone who possesses a heart capable of hurt, ears that open to secret frequencies, and a tongue that savors each word spun so slowly in the mouth.

–Michael Waters

 

She writes: “the bones of my hand tucked underneath my skull”. She writes: “I rush to the shower to scrub // with rose soap, / as water all around me turns to tears”. The poems here sound with utter depth and emotional resonance, singing even as they weep. Such work is a devotion, an articulation so strange and precise that I close the book knowing I’ve encountered a breathprint so unique and singular that the poems, even as they carry loss, renew me. I fall in love with World again and again, and am astonished by the chance to Be. What a profound gift this is.

–Aracelis Girmay
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Description

Where Space Bends

by Anique Sara Taylor

$19.99, Full-length, paper

978-1-64662-186-6

2020

Anique Sara Taylor‘s work has appeared in Rattle, Common Ground Review, Adanna, Stillwater Review, Earth’s Daughters among others. She’s co-authored works for HBO, Scholastic, Simon&Schuster and a three-act play that was performed by Playwrights Horizons and Williamstown Playhouse. In 2014 her chapbook was chosen Finalist by both Minerva Rising and Blue Light Press’ Chapbook Competitions. In 2015 Blue Light Press’ Chapbook Competition chose her next book Under the Ice Moon a Finalist. She teaches/taught Creative Writing for Benedictine Hospital’s Oncology Support Program, Bard LLI and Writers in the Mountains. She holds a Poetry MFA (Drew University), Diplome (The Sorbonne), a Painting BFA (Highest Honors/Pratt) and Drawing MFA (Pratt Institute).

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