Strangers

by Rob Taylor

Overview

“It makes no sense. You would be strangers / if not for this.”

In Strangers, Rob Taylor makes new the epiphany poem: the short lyric ending with a moment of recognition or arrival. In his hands, the form becomes not simply a revelation in words but, in Wallace Stevens' phrase, “a revelation in words by means of the words.” The epiphany here is not only the poet’s. It’s ours. A book about the songlines of memory and language and the ways in which they connect us to other human beings, to read Strangers is to become part of the lineages (literary, artistic, familial) that it braids together—to become, as Richard Outram puts it, an “unspoken / Stranger no longer.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771964203
Publisher:	Biblioasis
Publication date:	04/06/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	922,426
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Rob Taylor is the author of four poetry collections, including Strangers (Biblioasis, 2021) and The News (Gaspereau Press, 2016), which was a finalist for the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. He is also the editor of What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation (Nightwood Editions, 2018) and the guest editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2019 (Biblioasis, 2019). Rob lives with his family in Port Moody, BC.

Table of Contents

Strangers 11

You ask me about my mother 12

Smoothing the Holy Surfaces 13

That Scar 14

Lunch 15

Speak When Illuminated 16

A Normal Day 17

Love, fidelity, etc. 18

The bucket is blue and deep and brims with cool water 20

Aubade 21

Weather in Dublin 22

Ultrasound 27

The Future 28

Colic 29

Transatlantic 30

November, Six a.m. 31

The Jockey of Artemision 32

One Lie 33

Krakatoa 34

3M 35

What Wisdom's in Wisdom Recorded? 36

At Roblin Lake 38

Voices 53

The Artist 54

The Long Goodbye 55

Stroking your back through a nightmare 57

Poems 58

King Tide 59

The Commons 60

Lazienki Park 61

On the Occasion of my Mother First Forgetting my Name 69

The Baffled King 70

Diagnosis 71

What did you dream about? 72

Most days you still remember 73

Old Game 74

Why and Why 75

Transmission Tower 76

Reprieve 77

Return to Roblin 78

Are your flies grass, like mine? 80

Matryoshka 81

Now I must be gentle 82

Long Distance 83

Notes 85

Acknowledgments 89

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Strangers

“It takes a special temperament to be able to write as directly and intimately about such situations as Taylor does without lapsing either into sentimentality or self-pitying melodrama. There is indeed nothing showy or theatrical about Taylor’s poetic methods, and although the endnotes reveal a wide range of literary sources, he wears his knowledge lightly ... These poems’ disarmingly frank explorations of self knowledge represent a major advance on an already impressive poetic career.”—Christopher Levenson, The Ormsby Review

"If 'Imagery is the memory of memory' as Stanley Plumly believed, Rob Taylor’s Strangers out with Biblioasis press uses imagery as both revelation and reconciliation. The poems tease epiphany from memory, memory from language, language from grief and loss. I urge everyone to go out and buy this wonderful poetry collection that dares sadness and boldly remembers, imagining a present moment where our deceased loved ones and friends are still close by, albeit unseen, making loss and life more palpable."—The Miramichi Reader

Praise for Rob Taylor

"Taylor’s most affecting and adept poems remix actual quotations from the project participants inside of poetic structures and techniques. The saddest poem, perhaps, is the one that gives the book its title: 'When people say, "So how are you?" / really they want you to say, "Oh I’m great." / I’m sure there’s something chemical to it, but // when you say, "Oh not so great" / people go, "I didn’t want to hear that." / I have been trained since I was a very young child.'"—Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press

"[Taylor's] charming and insightful blending of life and death, memories and premonitions, often catches the reader off guard with casual offhand profundity … Thanks to his poetic directness we are emotionally with him and his family all the way.”—Christopher Levenson, Vancouver Sun

"The News has an odd and noteworthy relationship with sentimentality … Rather than striking an ironic and self-effacing stance, a stance which a lesser poet would no doubt have taken, Taylor engages honestly, vulnerably, and aptly with his topic … Despite this being the poet’s second collection, it will no doubt be cherished like a first born.”—Richard Kelly Kemick, The Fiddlehead

“These conversationally philosophical musings, with an undercurrent of the terrible/horrible news infiltrating baby’s beneficence, find ‘tension’ and ‘intimacy’ waltzing.”—Joanne Light, Halifax Chronicle-Herald

“Taylor’s new book makes you not want to take anything for granted. Waking up to your partner playing Ella Fitzgerald. Dinner with friends. Appreciating a good cranberry sauce. The news is good.”—Matthew Walsh, Poetry is Dead

From the Publisher