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photo Rohan Sooklall
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Richard Tayson's second book of poems, The World Underneath was released in 2008 by Kent State University Press. His first book of poetry, The Apprentice of Fever won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, and his poems, articles, and reviews have been published in five countries. Tayson's co-authored book of prose, Look Up for Yes was fetured on Dateline NBC and became a bestseller in Germany. A New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, Tayson has received a Pushcart Prize, Prairie Schooner's Bernice Slote and Edward Taylor awards, and is currently a Chancellor's Fellow at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, where he is working on a dissertation concerning William Blake's influence on American popular culture.
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“Reading Richard Tayson's The World Underneath rejoices my heart and gives me a little hope for both humanity and poetry. I read with awe the sequence in which this gay poet attends his sister-in-law's home delivery of a son, after flying ‘over one of the nineteen states that still puts people like me in prison. O Texas, O Tennessee, sweet Georgia with your one-to-twenty years felony.’ Tayson’s language is fast-moving, passionate, compassionate—alive with physical, spiritual and political detail that makes him heir to Muriel Rukeyser.”
—Alicia Ostriker
“Richard Tayson sees the world through the eyes of a man dedicated to love. His poems walk the walk of a poet willing to open that world and look at it for what it is, its joys and terrors, even when he must look at his own dark insides. I especially rejoice for his poems of intimacy and friendship with women, women whom he sees not as ‘other,’ but as people struggling with the same concerns that he has. This sensibility is a rare contribution to our literature! In a life threatening moment, he gains a clear vantage, ‘you climb higher, get a wide view of the worlds delicacies, love. . . .’ In The World Underneath, the poems are all love poems whose beauty and authority convince me of the depth of the poet’s journey. His poems are easy to enter—you may feel that you are talking to a best friend—so easy to enter you might not notice the twin knives of truth and lyricism they have been held up to.”
—Toi Derricotte
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READINGS / CRAFT DISCUSSIONS
New Jersey
Wednesday, May 28
U.S.1 Reading Series
Princeton Public Library
Community Room
65 Witherspoon St.
Princeton, New Jersey
609-924-9529
with Alicia Ostriker
New York City
Thursday, June 12, 6pm
Briarwood Library of the Queens Public Library
85-12 Main Street
FREE
Writing Workshop: Writing from Behind the Mask
Saturday, June 21, 10-4
Zen Center of New York City
Description / Registration: www.mro.org/firelotus/retreats/retreatdescriptions.php
Recent Past Readings
New York
February 15, 4pm
The Graduate Center, CUNY
February 20
Radio show: The Moe Green Poetry Hour
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onword/page/3
February 25
New School University
March 15
The Ear Inn
Colorado
April 21
University of Colorado, Denver
April 22
University of Northern Colorado
Earth Day Celebration
With Colorado Poet Laureate, Mary Crow
April 24
Colorado State University, Fort Collins
MFA Writing Series
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