Lisa C. Taylor Reads at ECSU

Let me give you a hint on how to appreciate Lisa C Taylor’s poetry.  Listen to her.           Lisa read at ECSU last Thursday April 4th 2013.
 She is not an over the top, hit you over the head shouting type of poet.  She slips her images in on you.  If you drift off, you might miss it.  But that is okay because the poems are short enough so that you can come back in for the next one.               
Lisa C Taylor is one of the most visual poets I know.  She says, “The sky is a fusion of light and stone."  Wait a minute, the sky is stone?                            She says, “The way darkness and light compromise in mid-winter,Afternoon a murky version of morning.”         
She says, “History of water stored/ in the muscles of clouds”                         Wait a minute.  She sees clouds as a history of water.  She sees muscles in clouds.  I never thought of it that way but now that she shows it to me, I see it too.                 She even makes me see things that aren’t there.  She says…“In humid August, there’s one lone window/ Overlooking a dusky riverbed,/ Not a signature path or dimpled snow,Only silence brightened by the dead.” 
Even as the poet tells me it’s not there she causes me to see it.  She says there is NOT a signature path or dimpled snow.  But as I read her I see them.  The path winding along like a scrawled signature; and the indentations in the melting snow. 
It’s sort of apophatic poetry, poetry about what is NOT.  Creating an image by telling us it is not there. 
And then after the image we notice that it is propelled by end-line rhymeWindow/riverbed snow /dead
 I don’t know much about much but let me tell you something:If you listen to Lisa C Taylor’s poetry you’ll see some pretty amazing stuff.    And…                You’ll learn something about yourself.         Edmond Chibeau