Description
Poetry. A slim volume of minimalist verse that takes the reader on an exploration of unfamiliar terrain with the senses heightened. It is quiet and sensitive; one perceives and feels every drop, shadow and ray of light. The mood is enhanced by black and white graphics produced by three French artists—Sibylle Baltzer, Nelly Buret and Caroline Francois-Rubino—and one Greek — Dimitris Souliotis.
"THE DARK BRIGHTNESS represents a turn in John Taylor's writing. Known for his short prose evoking his childhood in Des Moines and his adult life in France, where he has long lived, Taylor is now writing short, meditative, almost 'pre-Socratic' poems arranged into sequences and focused on existential issues: a man's relationship to language (and foreign language), to nature, to his personal past, and to his future death. At the heart of this volume, with these various themes, is an attempt to reproduce essential moments when something—a phenomenon in the outer world, or a thought, an emotion, a sensation—comes into being, emerges into visibility, into awareness, something that was previously within a darkness, or was perhaps itself the darkness." —Jeremy Alden
Author Bio
John Taylor is a writer, critic and translator who was born in Des Moines in 1952 and has lived in France since 1977. He has written seven books of stories, short prose and poetry, notably THE APOCALYPSE TAPESTRIES (Xenos Books, 2004), NOW THE SUMMER CAME TO PASS (Xenos Books, 2012), both books available as e-books, and IF NIGHT IS FALLING (Bitter Oleander Press, 2012). He has also published the three-volume Paths to Contemporary French Literature (2007) and Into the Heart of European Poetry (2010) - all four books published by Transaction Press. For Chelsea Editions, he has translated three large collections of poetry and prose from French: Philippe Jaccottet, AND, NONETHELESS (2011); Pierre-Albert Jourdan, THE STRAW SANDALS (2011); and Louis Calaferte, THE VIOLET BLOOD OF THE AMETHYST (2013). From Italian he has translated Lorenzo Calogero, AN ORCHID SHINING IN THE HAND: SELECTED POEMS 1932-1960 (Chelsea, 2015); and Alfredo de Palchi, NIHIL (Xenos- Chelsea, 2017).
Author City: Saint-Barthélemy d'Anjou FRA