John Taggart
John Taggart Poems
The horizon of all possibilities
returns as the muffled terror of institutions—
gleaming waxed floors
...
To breathe and stretch one's arms again
to breathe through the mouth to breathe to
breathe through the mouth to utter in
...
Darkened not completely dark let us walk in the darkened field
trees in the field outlined against that which is less dark
under the trees are bushes with orange berries dark green leaves
not poetry’s mixing of yellow light blue sky darker than that
...
Not sweet sixteen not even sweet sixteen and she's moaning
not even sixteen years old and she's moaning
not even sweet sixteen and she's moaning the words
moaning out the words to "Precious Lord"
...
You have to hear the sound before you play the sound.
You have to hear you have to you have to hear to
hear you have to give you have to give ear you
who have you who have ears you who have ears to
...
Fictions of the one you love
("Vertigo")
Not the life dreamt of
but the one found while living it—
...
Whether you can tell from this distance what
the house was before it was
consumed by wildness, by rampant
...
Riverwater rushes downstream whitewater over blackrock, over
ragged rockcleft past lean-to, boulder-slabs on the riverbank—
frenzy of fast water meeting riverrock,
...
And goes is gone
cause for mourning head
in hands in tears gonna be a long long wait for the resurrection
of the dead.
...
Those who hear the train they had better worry worry
those who hear they had better worry worry.
...
John Taggart Biography
John Taggart (born 1942) is an American poet and critic. He was born in Guthrie Center, Iowa. He graduated with honors in 1965 from Earlham College in Indiana, earning a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy. In 1966 he received a M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Chicago, and in 1974 he completed a Ph.D. in the Humanities Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Syracuse University. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Taggart was the editor and publisher of Maps, an acclaimed literary magazine. In 1978, edited an issue of "Truck" devoted to the work of Theodore Enslin. His work has been widely published and anthologized, and as far back as 1978 his unique style was exerting an influence over his peers, poets such as Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Gil Ott. For many years he was Professor of English and Director of the Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Shippensburg University; he retired in 2001.)
The Best Poem Of John Taggart
White Days, Interruption (&Quot;One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest&Quot;)
The horizon of all possibilities
returns as the muffled terror of institutions—
gleaming waxed floors
long corridors & locked rooms
stretch into interminable futures
wherein whiteness is the administration of days
which
will not suffer a whit of deviation
or allow more than a rectangle of sky—
The wind blows in squalls
and between clouds & clouds
words shrivel the will
but if one were to say that words could be prayers
if one were to say that words could be love or tokens of love
if one were to say that words could grieve
then the wind that blows in squalls might be the sound of elegies
through the pines
& the fog at dusk could be said to be settling back
on the green forests & the black mountains,
hushed & hushing
a syllabic quietness
demanding nothing
vanishing at dawn
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4/19/2024 8:27:18 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Beautifully exacted rhythmic stones shapes filled life