John Taggart's New and Selected

Wow.  I haven't posted on this blog for over a year.  Much of that year has been spent working as a paid blogger, so I guess I had my blogging fix. I'm still blogging for work, but now, back at PW, I edit our new blog PWxyz.  But maybe here I'll write a bit about some poetry and nonfic books I'm looking forward to.

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But, on to the cover to the left.  This is an upcoming book I'm quite excited about.  John Taggart is a poetry stalwart, having plugged away in the trenches of poetry for decades, taking off from Oppen and finding his own way toward a kind of ambient pastoral poetry that's somewhere between Oppen and Bronk.  Flood Editions did has last couple of books, and then, surprisingly, Copper Canyon signed him on for this selected poems, Is Music, which is a monumental book.  I say it's ambient, meaning the poems don't exactly begin or end, or quite conclude.  So to have so many of them together really makes them work, like turning off all the lights and putting on an Eno album.  And what a stunning cover!  The book was supposed to pub in May but has been delayed, so it's not quite out yet, but should be in stores soon.  Look out for it.