Volume 10 195
With, say, three acres of grass bounded
By road, driveway, and vegetable garden?
Taylor also addresses the reader explicitly to-
ward the end of “Landscape with Tractor” when he
states, “And I ask you / again, how would it be?”
After this line, in a nice turn, the speaker seems to
move inward, appearing in this greatest moment of
emotional intensity to be talking to himself. Thus,
one of the poem’s psychological progressions can
be recognized—a movement from public to private
utterance:
or dissected; but gone. And I ask you
again, how would it be? To go on with your life,
putting gas in the tractor, keeping down thistles,
and seeing, each time you pass that spot
the form in the grass....
Taylor moves in this most organic fashion away
from the historian’s act of recording moments in
telling detail to the poet’s act of exploring the am-
biguities and complexities inherent in the more emo-
tive realms of human experience. The fact that the
poem begins and ends on unanswerable questions
reinforces the unresolvable nature of the experience
the speaker narrates. “Landscape with Tractor”
strives not to answer questions about the fragility of
human life or the violent essence of human nature;
it seeks, instead, and perhaps in small memorial, to
pose or submit the facts of a sad story in as straight-
forward a manner as possible, uncovering one of the
most absolute of human truths. The speaker’s final
realization reminds that violent or unacceptable ex-
periences are psychologically permanent.
References to the significance of the region of
many of Henry Taylor’s poems or to what Ameri-
can critic Peter Stitt calls “Mr. Taylor’s sense of
nostalgia for his home territory” are not in and of
themselves erroneous. Nevertheless, because it is
possible for certain readers to over-emphasize the
poetic significance of Taylor’s love and knowledge
for Virginia farmland and folk (especially those
contemporaries “bunched up in several urban ar-
eas,” as American writer and critic George Garrett
calls them), it seems important to point out that the
Taylor landscape is often as much scenery and set-
ting as it is topic. Since Taylor works so beauti-
fully in the narrative mode, his interest in atmos-
phere and background should not be surprising.
Besides, as the study of any number of writers who
take a significant interest in the details of their own
homelands will tell us, human universals always
rise from specific details the color of the mountain
and the odd, cool texture of the fishing stream.
Source:Adrian Blevins, in an essay for Poetry for Students,
Gale, 2001.
Sources
Derricotte, Toi, “On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black
Female Corpses,” in Captivity,University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1989.
Dillard, R. H. W., “The Flying Change,” in The Hollins
Critic,Vol. XXIII, No 2, April, 1986, p. 15.
Garrett, George, “Henry Taylor,” in Dictionary of Literary
Biography,Vol. 5:American Poets Since World War II,
First Series,Part II, Gale, 1980, pp. 322-27.
Horowitz, David, Peter N. Carroll, and David D. Lee, eds.,
On the Edge: A New History of 20th-century America,West
Publishing Co., 1990.
Johnson, Dan, “An Interview With Henry Taylor,” in Win-
dow,Spring, 1976, pp. 1-21.
Meyers, Jack, and David Wojahn, eds. A Profile of Twenti-
eth-Century American Poetry,Southern Illinois University
Press, 1991.
Shapiro, David, “A Review of Henry Taylor’s The Flying
Change,” in Poetry,March, 1987, pp. 348-350.
Stitt, Peter, “Landcapes and Still Lives,” in New York Times
Book Review,May 4, 1986, pp. 22-3.
Taylor, Henry, Compulsory Figures: Essays on Recent
American Poets,Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
———, Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series,Vol.
7, Gale, 1988. pp. 171-89.
———, The Flying Change,Louisiana State University
Press, 1985.
———, Understanding Fiction: Poems, 1986–1996,
Louisiana State University Press, 1996.For Further Study
Broughton, Irv, ed., The Writer’s Mind: Interviews with
American Authors,University of Arkansas Press, 1990.
Broughton interviews a number of American authors,
both poets and fiction writers, including Paul Zim-
mer, Colleen McElroy, and Fred Chappell. He also
interviews Henry Taylor, who talks about his child-
hood and those who influenced his writing.
Jarman, Mark, and David Mason, eds., Rebel Angels: 25 Po-
ets of the New Formalism,Story Line Press, 1996.
Rebel Angelsis an anthology presenting poets aligned
with or sympathetic to New Formalism, a movement
in American poetry reviving rhyme, meter, and nar-
rative in innovative ways.
Wright, Stuart, “Henry Taylor: A Bibliographic Chronicle,
1961-1987,” Bulletin of Bibilography,Vol. 45, No. 3, 1988,
pp. 79-91.
Wright provides a thorough checklist of work pub-
lished by Taylor from 1961-1987, including poems
which have yet to appear in a collection. A short crit-
ical introduction accompanies the bibliography.Landscape with Tractor