Susan Taylor

Susan Taylor Poems

Susan Taylor Biography

Susan L. Taylor (born January 23, 1946) is an American editor, writer, and journalist. She served as editor-in-chief of Essence from 1981 through 2000. In 1994, American Libraries referred to Taylor as "the most influential black woman in journalism today". Taylor was born in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City to a Trinidadian mother and a father from St. Kitts. She grew up in East Harlem, where her father owned a clothing store. She went to a Catholic school. As a teenager, she moved with her family to the New York borough of Queens. In 1987, Taylor received the Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications. The Magazine Publishers of America gave Taylor its Henry Johnson Fisher Award, considered one of the industry's highest honors, in 1998. She was the first African-American woman to receive the award. In 2002, Taylor was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame for her work at Essence. In 2003, Exceptional Women in Publishing (EWIP), formerly Women in Periodical Publishing, presented Taylor its fifth annual Exceptional Woman in Publishing award. The NAACP gave Taylor its President's Award in 2006. Taylor is an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority; she was inducted on July 13, 2013.)

The Best Poem Of Susan Taylor

Titania Wings

From The Suspension of the Moon

These wings were my passport to nakedness.
They are not angel's but fairy's wings.
The paintbrushes and pigments he uses on them
persuade me that joy can be squeezed
in drops out of my skin into your eyes,
so you love me as long as my young body
lasts in his frame — long as anyone knows.

The blue fall of water silk over my arm covers my legs
and Venus's mound in a shimmering smoke shift.
In the moony studio light, I am really like that
but the woodbine and violets are normal sized flowers
scaled up into giants to make me look small.
My hair a steady spray of gold so the veil and my tresses
suggest moon and sun curling gently upon one another.

I know my nipples surpass the perfection of any bud.
I plant my feet firmly down on the leaf's fringe
but they run down the beach of his looking
and flutter kick through the wondering tide in his eyes,
behind to wherever your thoughts find a place
with Titania unclothed —
her wings in your face.

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