poetry book review: And the WEARY Are at REST

Andrew Taylor: And the WEARY Are at REST [21 poems, 32 5x8 pages]
(2008 sunnyoutside, PO.Box 911, Buffalo NY  14207, USD$8;
www.sunnyoutside.com)

When a small book of poems is designed to look funereal,
the poems had better be, too. In 21 poems over 32 pages,
Andrew Taylor’s survivor-grief absorbs anything & everything
into itself as it cycles & recycles everything he knows, knew,
sees, saw as his mind gradually regenerates itself while it
“focuses on one of life’s major considerations – mortality. “
(back-cover copy.) Was the woman who died Clare Greenhalgh
for whom "Elegiac Stanzas" is dedicated? Was she his wife?

Its light-grey cover art of black birds on stark leafless trees,
& black string-binding (visible between pp 16-17) add to this,
as does its body-text’s antique delicately ornate ironwork-
detailed typeface (Lanston’s Village No. 2, designed by
F.W Goudy in 1932.)

Here’s Taylor's agonizingly accurate,
quasi-sonnetic 4th-last poem (p.26)

For the Dead

Time is no healer. I think of you,
your enjoyment at early evening light.
Views to the mountain, or into the garden
cultivated like a picture, you directing.
Padded envelopes after visits by rail.
Difficult walks to country pubs, curry runs
in northern towns. No resting place. I’d like
somewhere to visit, place flowers.  Perhaps
blossom landing is memorial enough. In mind
at the oddest of times: a timetable scattered
ia rain-soaked gutter, a view of fully-laden
fields or feeling like an afterthought.
Will there ever be an end to this?

------------------------------------------------------
Taylor lives & works in Liverpool, England
where he co-edits erbacce magazine and press.
His blog is:http://www.andrewtaylorpoetry.blogspot.com/
Some of the book’s poems have appeared in small mags,
the anthology “Poetry and Skin Cream” (erbacce, 2004),
& have been broadcast over BBC Merseyside.

He thanks Alan Corkish, William Fallows, Ursula Hurley,
David McNamara, Nichola Marr, James and Clare Scott,
Robert Sheppard, Edna and William Taylor, Ben Holton,
and Rob Clover (Epic45) Antony Harding (July skies),
Scott Sinfield (Portal) and Edge Hill University
(http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/about/history/)
Poetry & Poetics Research Group.

Afterword: I want to thank Doug Holder, editor & publisher
of IbbetsonStreetPressUpdate for patiently waiting for me
to return to reviewing, sending me this book to review
a year & a half after the death of my wife Carolin Combs
(26 JAN 07)