To let the sun /
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...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Fayetteville :
University of Arkansas Press,
[2025].
|
| Summary: | 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. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | xvi, 67 pages ; 23 cm. |
| ISBN: | 9781682262719 1682262715 |