Curios: Poems

by Judith Taylor

Overview

In Curios, her first collection of poetry, Judith Taylor emerges as the speediest meditative poet since Emily Dickinson. Her poems set off for all the worthy old ontological destinations, but what new routes they discover! Taylor can cover more ground in eight lines than most poets manage in eighty. But her rapid transit is accomplished without loss of density or emotional resonance.

Taylor's love of literary tales is deeply embedded in-and extended by-her poems. References to Wilde, Rilke, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Charlotte Brontë, and Lady Murasaki are rife, as are characters from fairy tales and children's stories. Even familial figures take on archetypal roles, lending the speaker's personal memory a mythic significance. The most pronounced motifs in Curios suggest a world enriched by fantasy: ghosts, fans, screens, masks, silk, windows, dreams, and curtains. But Taylor makes apparent that her imagination has bloomed not only to augment but to accommodate the world's multifariousness: I wanted everything connected to everything in a logical universe. / . . . In time, the world begins to shape your stubborn mind. ("She's Got Mail")

This debut collection is remarkable not only for its consistent style but also because it showcases a new form of poem-her own invention-a "curio" in itself. In extended lines, usually seven to eight, Taylor delivers deadpan statements and poses questions that are startlingly provocative-more like koans than interrogatives. Her poems range widely and wildly, at times taking surrealistic turns, yet they always maintain contact with the earth. It is a bonus to the reader that Taylor's grounding wire is humor. Even as the poems astonish by their swiftness, daring, and the accuracy of their surprising connections, they make us laugh: Do the stars hiss when they slash across the sky, cooling down? / Get a grip on yourself, said Mother often. ("Excess")

The volume's title, Curios, is remarkably apt. With unexpected images and questions reminiscent of childhood, Taylor riddles the surface of perception. These poems prove that curiosity-and imagination-will get the best of us. This title received a grant from the Greenwall Fund of The Academy of Ameri

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781889330457
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	04/01/2000
Edition description:	1 ED
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Taylor is the author of two collections of poetry, Selected Dreams from the Animal Kingdom (Zoo Press, 2003), and Curios (Sarabande Books, 2000) as well as a chapbook, Burning, for which she received the Portlandia Prize. Taylor is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She currently teaches literature and writing classes in Los Angeles, and is the editor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

    Unnatural Fuchsia

I try to outdo reality, which tends to dress modestly.
Saw myself stroking a harp wearing a snood.
So why not take up the art of the tambourine or zither?
The siren call of a fictional life.
Practice separating your vowels from your consonants.
There are certain sentences I will never say aloud.
What's that roiling on the table, bouncing off the wall?
Mood, mood.
I got tired of pulling away from the prevailing winds.
Now I let them buoy me, bless me a little, before they knock me about.

    Reality

Three horses standing in a field, heads down, still.
For a small moment I had two sisters.
A mother came home from the hospital without a baby.
They told me to forget all about it, and I did.
My living sister found the letters of condolence in our mother's closet.
Puzzled, she brought them to me.
I still don't understand about the secret underskin of families.
From the car the horses were not alive, but made of velvet.

    Scary Movies

My nurse Kitty plays a funny game.
Is Kitty in the closet? Kitty, are you behind the couch?
Christ of the Cross appears in my bedroom.
Since I'm a Jewish child, I'm surprised.
Kitty pounces on me from behind the drapes.
Skinny Jesus with holes in his skin, drops of button blood.
I'm going to get you!
I hide my head in Mother's lap at the movies during the newsreels.
We're dropping bombson bad people.
It's only make-believe, darling, she says.

    Paper Dolls

They taught us to cut them out in school, rows of identical girls, a pattern.
One breaks off from the rest, or an arm appears, a leg, from another doll.
Now she is excessive, interesting.
As a child I saw a film: a man stood over a beautiful laughing woman,
      raised his riding crop.
The scene ended and I wanted to know what happened to women like her.
Since then I've heard this tale many times, its varying degrees of clumsy
      violence.
Do the scissors make the mistake, or does the hand?

    Religious Instruction

Mother bade me enter the rose-smelling closet where I assiduously
     studied the texts.
O Litany of Blue Robe, O Sacred Book of Shoes.
And the Mystery: why does taffeta change colors in every fold as if
     light were trapped there?
A child tracing curves of necklines: some scalloped, some deep and
     smooth as moons.
Stroking foamy chiffon, burrowing into fur.
We were votaries of the goddess of costume.
My heart pumped roadways to mother-love, to glove-love, to Saks
     Fifth Avenue.

    Shuttered

—after Odilon Redon, Yeux Clos

A woman's head with closed eyes rises out of water.
The sky smudged dark at the horizon as if someone knew what I needed.
Is her head attached to a body under the sea's creamy glass?
Water's a kind of architecture you can step in and out of—but only
      sometimes.
Once in school I was instructed not to speak for a week.
We passed notes back and forth, my scrawl glowing mean as a brand.
The keyboard's missing some keys, the scissors snap on nothing.

    Funny Hats

Mother placed a shiny black bug with purple spots and a tiny veil on me.
Insect hats don't go with Dignity.
There's an old photo I love: she's moored a darling truffle to the side of
     her head.
That must have been in the Before days, before she took the Vow of
     Sacred Cow.
Though the saleswoman smiled, her eyebrows gloomed.
I thought of myself as Alice or Dorothy, on loan to the middle class.
I wanted her to wear a large bird or a bathtub on her head, to prove
     she was my mother.

    Mistakes

As he put me on the train to college, Father said, Don't make any
     mistakes.
I became the Princess of Mistakes.
The interesting thing about looking out a window—it tells the truth, but
     only one truth.
All vision is blandishment, I didn't know that then.
Someone was always saying, Don't Touch.
One of my more persistent mistakes: not knowing why I couldn't have
     everything I wanted.
Everything can be changed into everything, I heard another ten-year-
     old say.

    Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga's hut struts on stringy chicken legs.
And hey, that's Baba Y. navigating the night sky in her mortar and pestle!
Russian witch of my childhood—power for good, or outrageousness.
Lilac Fairy, Little Goose Girl: the nicer side of the mirror.
Haven't you noticed how my teeth grind when you ask me to be rational?
The Brothers Grimm believe women need the Prince.
I believe in plot, my dear, only when it suits me.

    Excess

A baby's fingers, blossoming petals.
The holiday presence of her white crocheted sweater.
Your planet of longing spinning slower, wonky.
Neighbor children, I wish you'd shut up when I want to think!
How you never wanted to be pregnant, how fat you'd get.
You diet, take off excess flesh, put it back on.
Do the stars hiss when they slash across the sky, cooling down?
Get a grip on yourself, said Mother often.

    Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires

To live overpowered, devoted to my brilliant mistakes.
Every woman needs one Mr. Wrong in her life.
For emergencies, a cocktail of Valium and white wine.
Teeter-tottering toward stiletto assignations.
Bed of spikes, bed of fur, bed of silk—is there any difference?
I look to find things to dislike about Mr. Wrong: the grease on his tie,
      the worn-down heels of his klutzy brown shoes.
When Anna Karenina stares down that train, I want to yell, Stop,
      honey, no man is worth it!
I believe this six out of every seven days.
What is fiction, but another kind of mirror?

    Eye Shadows

All aristocratic men wore makeup at the court of Louis Quinze.
The seducer Lovelace looked foppish but was lethal.
Since then, men's cosmetics have taken a precipitous fall.
Now he's ill-tempered as she struggles with her mascara.
In the moonlight, no one wears makeup, and if there's blush left on her
      face, it's blanched out.
She sits on him, and he's her rocking horse, familiar, steady, silver.

    A Visitation From One Sort of Angel

Cars honk more plaintively in New York than anywhere else.
A window, far down, opening by means of a red sleeve.
Things seem this way when you're eighteen floors up.
I want some minutes to be longer than others.
If I were telling a story about a real angel, he'd appear at the casement,
       and knock, his silly wings beating.
Do my slow high-rise minutes ever add up to his driving-the-highway
       minutes?
The doorman buzzes up, I open the extraordinary door.
When young, I misread Rilke's angels as sexual presences.
Now I know the poor beautiful body in real time is what I've always
       craved.

    The Demon Lover

This won't be at all like Hamlet.
I will not be the kind of ghost you are used to.
I will do invisible naughty things to you while you are teaching, while
       you are dining, while you are singing.
Your chalk will suddenly screech on the blackboard.
You will drop your fork into the red center of your Porterhouse.
You will cover your privates with the score of a cantata or motel—
      oops!—motet.
Swooping and bungeeing around you for the rest of your days, I'm
      making mischief: a woman playful, not wholly unkind, logistical.

Table of Contents

Unnatural Fuchsia	3
Reality	4
Scary Movies	5
Paper Dolls	6
Religious Instruction	7
Shuttered	8
Funny Hats	9
Mistakes	10
Coast to Coast	11
Baba Yaga	12
Excess	13
Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires	14
Eye Shadows	15
A Visitation From One Sort of Angel	16
The Demon Lover	17
Sky Writing	18
Domestic	19
Instructions to Her Next Husband	20
In Private	21
Costly	22
Chekhovian DreamHum	25
Imagination	26
Acting Wilde	27
Other Than Odalisque	28
Between Utterances	29
Achromatopia	30
Pastorale	31
In the Country	32
Bats	33
Page From a Pillow Book	34
Lovers	35
Weight of Hair	36
Mask	37
Rice Paper	38
Legacy	39
Around the Corner	40
We Maenads	41
The Language of Yes	42
The Language of No	43
The Language of Maybe	44
Without Anesthesia	45
Home	49
After Image	50
The Underbelly of Days	51
Natural Woman	52
Antiquity	53
Los Angeles Quotidian	54
Wardrobe of Air	55
Nostradamus L.A. Style	56
Assorted Holiday Flavors	57
Day-Glo	58
Of Unknown Etiology	59
Cage of Crickets	60
Remedy for Backache	61
Growl	62
Jewel	63
The Vast Green Sea	64
Unclothed	65
Moorish Weather	66
She's Got Mail	67
Notes	69
The Author	71

What People are Saying About This

Stephen Dunn

In her wonderful Curios, Judith Taylor manages to achieve what few poets have: to be clear and enigmatic. I love how these small, large-spirited poems simultaneously probe and flirt with their subjects, and how they can be idiosyncratically wise one moment, darkly humorous the next, It's a terrific debut.

David St. John

Judith Taylors marvelous debut volume, Curios, unfolds like an album of extraordinary objectsof wonder, of contemplationechoing and reflecting staged flutterings of passionate asides. Aphoristic, wise, filled with a deadpan nonchalance, these poems are the shards of familial memory and post-relationship reckonings. The speaker holds, like slices of broken mirror, these pieces of the self she opens into the shape of a Japanese fan, and with it her voice releases the many breezes moving through her past.

Carol Muske

Judith Taylor writes as if she has just leaped, fully-armed, from the head of Zeus-arriving in our mortal midst in the form of this utterly persuasive, witty, and sexy, first book. Don't look for 'predecessors'-this is a completely original book.

Editorial Reviews

Judith Taylors long-awaited first book is full of wonder, commitment, and the sheer power of the brief, poetic moment. Short poem after poem flashes on the page and surprises with each turn. . . . a magic so few possess. One of the best poetry books of 1999 and one that deserves recognition.

The Bloomsbury Review

Do not presume to anticipate the course of these deft poems. Rather, know that each one acts as ballast against lyric predictability, nailing the dimwitted reader and the expert alike with a sure blow between the eyes. These are succinct, willful and at times naughty epistles about the multitudinous voices a poet speaks. Taylors style is immediate, intimate and often given to quick twists and turns. . . . Her poems tell truths in more than one guise, unpredictably and refreshingly.

ForeWord Magazine

Reminiscent of the jewel-like marbles, shot glasses, and lemon-colored corks dreamily set in a Joseph Cornell box, Judith Taylors debut collection, Curios, is full of her own poetic musings on lifes small detailsfrom Viceroys cigarettes to leopard bustiers. . . . her poems are more like assemblages of introspective non sequiturs that nevertheless deeply echo one anothers sentiments.

Village Voice Literary Supplement

Taylors poems generate the sensation of eidetic memory, that quick flash of a fading visual impression imprinted by a vivid scene. . . . She discovers that certain slant of light that lends her authority, and I want to believe her.

The Magazine For the Reading Life

Clothing, makeup, accessories and disguises make for all sorts of meaning in a debut that can unpackchildhood, art and geography from within adult appearance: "My heart pumped roadways to mother-love, to globe-love, to Saks Fifth Avenue." Curios includes 60 poems; the longest contains 11 lines. Since every line of every poem is a separate unit (a sentence or sentence-fragment), and the beat is always down, many poems feel end-stopped rather than finished. Throughout, costume is substituted for emotions or gestures, as well as for status: "Though I wore a green silk dress, I don't think he ever found me"; "Lusting after the same man, a friend and I bought identical red suede pumps"; "I wanted her to wear a large bird or bathtub on her head, to prove she was my mother." The slightness and whimsy of the curiosity cabinet contrasted with a distressed character playing dress-up may have been the goal here, but the book as a whole lacks the multiple levels of meaning that gives such mock-trifles depth. At best, Taylor makes quirky mind-music when one line strikes neatly off the one before it: "Water's a kind of architecture you can step in and out of--but only sometimes./ Once in school I was instructed not to speak for a week." (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

These curious "curios"--50 to be exact--are seven- or eight-line poems in which every line ends with a sentence. Eschewing meter, rhyme, and enjambment, Taylor marches to the beat of the end stop: "All tulips are lovely, but I have a favorite./ Pillow Book: flotsam of days, kept in a wooden pillow./ I was with a married man: this was a dream./ I lied to his wife, yes, I would stop./ The most beautiful tulips are the purple ones, love-bites." Rather than building to a crescendo, each sentence replaces the next, like a progression of slides: "the sun booms over us, shadows pointing long, opinionated fingers./ Is that a cigarette burn smoldering in the sky." Although she lives in California, Taylor doesn't view nature as idealized solitude--her landscape teems with alien creatures and makes her uncomfortable. The strongest point of this well-read and witty collection is humor, while the weakness lies in Taylor's ironic restraint that can alienate the reader. A first collection from a mature voice that many will find interesting.--Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

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