Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2008

by Eleanor Ross Taylor, Ellen Bryant Voigt (Foreword by)

Overview

Over nearly fifty years, Eleanor Ross Taylor has established herself as one of the foremost southern poets of her generation. Captive Voices gathers selections from Taylor's five previous books along with a generous helping of new poems. Scintillating, unusual, passionate, and profound, the poems range from contemporary pieces about a bag lady on a bus, to historical pieces about settlers held hostage and a wartime nurse caring for British wounded, to intensely personal poems about her dislike for her grandmother and worries about her son. The title poem — a real tour de force — explores the notion of captivity on several levels as it speaks to the suffering we all endure, some of which is of our own making. Decidedly regional yet determinedly universal, the poems in this remarkable volume, along with a foreword by Ellen Bryant Voigt, attest to the singular talent of a woman justly described as "a poet of genius."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807134122
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2009
Series:	Southern Messenger Poets
Pages:	166
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Eleanor Ross Taylor is the author of five previous volumes of poetry, including Wilderness of Ladies, Days Going/Days Coming Back, and Late Leisure. The recipient of the Shelley Memorial Prize awarded by the Poetry Society of America, the Library of Virginia's Virginia Prize for Poetry, and the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, she lives in Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

At 90, Taylor has been writing for decades, and this volume offers the best of her previous work—and a clutch of sparkling new poems. If you haven't read her before, prepare yourself for something remarkable. Whatever the subject, whatever the setting, Taylor's writing defines musicality; she's got a sense of rhythm that can make other poets sound like doggerel. A significant work.

Library Journal