Late Leisure: Poems

by Taylor, Eleanor Ross

• ISBN13: 9780807123553
• ISBN10: 0807123552
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

In these fifty-five poems that compose Late Leisure, Eleanor Ross Taylor shares dramatic, symbolic, intensely personal outpourings of her evolving consciousness -- "myself capriciously ongoing" -- as poet, woman, and elder. Though she has written throughout her life, it is now, in later years, that she blooms fullest, free of wifely and motherly occupations that nonetheless nurtured her artistry. Taylor's is a distinctly southern voice, audible in references to gardens and social ties and in folksy turns of phrase. But she wears a tremendously wide range of attitudes -- confidence, independence, amazement, sarcasm, revery, faith -- a fascinating, reassuring testimony to vitality. Many of her poems in Late Leisure have to do with discerning, deciphering, discovering -- and conversely with being lost or captive, and disappearing from the sight or earshot of others. For Taylor, these actions describe the mysteries of knowing her past and present selves and of plying the creative process. Suffusing the collection is the poet's penchant for solitude. Willfully, richly alone, Taylor paves her quiet way with brio: "Always reclusive, / I'm constructing my own brierpatch.... / 'The blackberry, permitted its own way; / is an unmanageable plant.' Here's a / variety called Taylor; 'Season late, / bush vigorous, hardy ... free from rust.' / That's it. Don't let my brierpatch rust.

Table of Contents

Long-Dreaded Event Takes Place	1	(1)
Diary Entry, March 24	2	(1)
Retired Pilot Watches Plane	3	(2)
Overgrown Path	5	(1)
Salting the Oatmeal	6	(1)
Completing the Pilgrimage	7	(2)
Katydids Sewanee	9	(2)
His Visit	11	(1)
Te Deum	12	(1)
A Place Apart	13	(3)
The Nature of Gods	16	(1)
The Lighthouse Keeper	17	(1)
Dust	18	(1)
A Change of State	19	(1)
On Being Worldly	20	(2)
Daytime Moon	22	(1)
Sparrow Eats Fried Chicken Wing	23	(1)
The Accidental Prisoner	24	(2)
Dissonance	26	(1)
How He Returned Thanks	27	(1)
The Farmer in the Dell	28	(3)
O Lamp	31	(1)
The Diary	32	(2)
Cloud Cover	34	(1)
Joe Bolton, 1969-1990	35	(2)
Find Me	37	(1)
These Gifts	38	(2)
Last Ant	40	(1)
August Doves	41	(1)
Why Angels Choir	42	(1)
Cuts Buttons Off an Old Sweater	43	(1)
Worlds Old and New	44	(3)
Late Dinner	47	(1)
Shaking the Plum Tree	48	(1)
Always Reclusive	49	(1)
A Harem of Hens	50	(1)
Like One Concussed	51	(1)
Contemplating Jailbreak	52	(2)
Ending Winter	54	(1)
Night Retrieves	55	(1)
Sitting in the Dark, Morning	56	(1)
Converse	57	(2)
Cat	59	(1)
One Last Warm Day	60	(1)
Deer	61	(1)
Afton Mountain	62	(1)
Homecoming	63	(1)
At Your Own Risk	64	(1)
Cocoon	65	(1)
Clothes from Three Planets	66	(1)
Kitchen Fable	67	(1)
The Hostage	68	(1)
The Sky-Watcher	69	(1)
Lift-Off	70	(1)
Late Leisure	71