Kent Taylor

the poetry of kent taylor

Born November 8, 1940,
New Castle, PA.
Medical Research, Poet, Sprinter.
Lives in San Francisco, CA.

bio

kent taylor

Kent Taylor started writing poetry his freshman year at Ohio Wesleyan University. After quitting medical school at Ohio State University, he returned to Cleveland, and became a charter member of the underground poetry scene that erupted there during the 1960s. His first six books were published by d. a. levy. Taylor moved to San Francisco in 1970. Publications include 14 books and hundreds of appearances in such anthologies and periodicals as The Quarterly, Rattapallax, Abraxas, Ragged Lion, Onthebus, Invisible City, Vagabond Anthology, Painted Bride Quarterly, Free Lance, and Rain City Review.

quote

Glad you are doing the Kent Taylor Book because I really believe Kent is one of this country's best poets.

--d.a. levy
from a letter to Tom Kryss
(printed in Torn Birds).

publications

books

Looking for D.A. Levy (Random Sightings): The D.A. Levy Bibliography Volume 1 [1963-1966] (Kirpan Press, 2006)
Days of Endless Nights (Kirpan Press, 2005)
Refusing the Ledge (Black Rabbit, 2004)
Night Physics (Kirpan Press, 2002)
Rabbits Have Fled (Black Rabbit, 1991)
Late Show at the Starlight Laundry (Black Rabbit, 1989)

journals

Onthebus
Rattapallax
Rattle
The Quarterly
Abraxas

biblio: d.a.levy COMPILATIONS

Bibliography edited by Alan Horvath and Kent Taylor BIBLIO PUBLICATION

poems

not quite Janine

Einstein
couldn't chart
your passage

fate brings you to earth
not gravity

no one
at fifteen
is subject to
the laws of physics

you fade
in and out
as the dimensions
of the known world
struggle
to accommodate you

the trick
is to cast
what's indistinct
far enough ahead
to be recognizable
when you catch up

~kent taylor

words

i always dreamed of
some flashing light
shadowed
on dark water
a flame in my head
if not in the sky
always chasing words
that knotted something inside
something felt days after
the untying
words along evening river banks
lonely with grass
words imagined during blackout forgotten
drunk
later remembered
like abandoned things
words locked in a girl's eyes
accidentally catching mine
words anxiously unspoken
because i didn't know there were
no words
the day brings its newness
like water
and i leave the words
and they silently
wait

~kent taylor

wake - for Nick Gabaldon, pioneering waterman

stuck
in life

at a loss
for words
or witnesses

drifting back
to the day
you first
paddled
up the coast
from Santa Monica
to surf
Malibu

years later
your oracular
poem
played out there

light still
warps
where you hit
the pier

remains to be seen

we disappear
from the ground
up
cut off
by the curvature
of the earth

empty nooses
pass for
halos
as a coin
flipped
at sunset
catches
the last ray
of light

~kent taylor

momento mori

This page is dedicated
to Jim Lowell and his
hugely influential
Asphodel Bookstore
which served as a
nucleus to the
Cleveland Poetry Scene.

above photo: d.a.levy sitting, kent taylor standing on the right.

images

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audio files

d.a.levy & kent taylor

Cleveland Dreams: sound files of kent taylor & d.a. levy reading poetry.

books

night physics, kent taylor

Night Physics - by Kent Taylor.
2002. 75 copies only. Write for prices and details:
A. Horvath. Kirpan Press, P.O. Box 2943, Vancouver, WA. 98668.

I wonder sometimes why I continue to read poetry. After reading Night Physics, I knew why. The lingering trance like state touches emotional constellations and the aroma of intangible realities. Kent Taylor's book is full of mirrors and memories and many poems about his departed, as in deceased, wife. In his poem Pantomime At My Wife's Grave he writes: I place a poem/ beside your name. This single simple gesture opens a flood of images: a poem as a rose, as a heart, an arrow of Cupid. I do not wish to say, because of this sadness, that his ability as a poet is proved by the fashion and intensity that his poems about his lost mate convey; however, this is true. I am always amazed how the careful placement of a word next to another word invokes such awesome and unnerving feeling. I am in the state of poetry via Night Physics. Kent Taylor's poems did this to me, now, this evening as I sit facing my own mirrors and memories.

~Michael Basinski
The Hold
http://www.the-hold.com/

days of endless nights, kent taylor

Days of Endless Nights by Kent Taylor. 2005. Alan Horvath, Kirpin Press, P. O. Box 2943 Vancouver, WA 98668-2943. Write for price. Only 60 made. Do it now.

Kent Taylor. Poet. Originally from Cleveland, and that band of poets pulling the loose yarn from the tweed coats and pale sweaters of the academic elites until those sweaters and tweeds unraveled and left poetry naked and howling happy and wet and dripping in the warm streets of poetic Cleveland joy 1960s, levy, Renegade and Black Rabbit poetry challenging the cops; the cops they were afraid. Well. Wow. This is poetry we needed then and bleed now for give us this poetry again. Oh Poet. And that is Kent Taylor, his tap-root of poems runs into that stream. Here, he is - still - still at it. Forty year later! Yeah. Here he is in these hand full of poems that still pull and they finding that space between people and senses and day and night, that seam where poetic clarity occurs, the sight happens, where the person, Kent Taylor, becomes the poet Kent Taylor walking that tender line poetic mind working picking up the shards of poetry and reflecting with intensity into what are for the poet - particular instances, moments, seconds, instances, in which there is poetry plucked and brought to the day surface for us all, all of us on it we feast.

~Michael Basinski
The Hold
http://www.the-hold.com/

Admissible Evidence (Random Sightings) - by d a levy and Kent Taylor.

Kirpin Press. Editor A. Horvath. P.O. Box 2943, Vancouver, WA 98668-2943. 100 made. Write for price and availability.

This is a wonderful historical document and should act as prototype for any such publication. It is a poetry reading given in Cleveland, Ohio in 1967 by d. a. levy and Kent Taylor. The book includes a CD of that reading and the poems in the book are the poems read at that reading and in the order in which they were presented. Levy has entered the mythic. He is the epitome, the essence and the definition of the rebel poet going contrary to law and the repressive order of society and allowing his poetic voice to sing loud. You can read about levy and you can read levy's poems.

Here, you can hear levy read the works. The poems are juxtaposed fragments of mind and silences and they sound with youthful and romantic truth (and he knows it himself and comments about such in his own poetry). Yet he is political, political because he calls it: THE POWER, out on the rug. No he does not sit home in his parent's paid for apartment and mumble among friends that yes - it is a horrible war in Iraq or Vietnam or Johnson this, Bush W. that, and closes the eyes. Oh Sigh. Levy was out there with his poetry-speaking tough against it: THE POWER. He wore his ethics like a flag. I like em. I like the poems. You feel the portal to the soul. But when you listen to levy you hear the young man voice, quiet and measured in truth poetry moral speaking, almost squeaking in its tiny-ness in the immense problem of repression in the world.

The poems are not pornographic, dirty or even violent. The easy speaking Cleveland cadence allows one to hear the simple yet direct poetry of that era when being morally just and standing up, speaking up - when in your own voice speeching really meant speaking. AH, it is a marvelous thing we have here. And following levy is Kent Taylor again with the measured slow and clear Cleveland speaking young man voice. The immediacy of his poetry is not a roar but in the clear simplicity that Kent Taylor relates the mood of his daily writing ritual thought. Unabashedly clear and simple knife that slices the bread, butters it. He titles many of his works the day they were written, trusting his perception. And like levy it is a young man voice. Not rallying the masses for peace or revolution but speaking the direct nakedness of the heart and soul that so defined and marked that era. An era when audiences didn't sleep in the back row or dream of Chinese food afterwards. Nope. It was believe! That poetry of the direct phone line brought together one person and then another and there was frank conversation and from that came definition and freedom. Walt Whitman said poets need good audiences.

Today's audiences are a sad and sour sack of chewed up pencils without erasers. Poets are more gymnasts than human is. Faith, ah, want faith in poetry? Listen to a few young guys. Young people poems ina church basement in Cleveland in 1967. The Draft outside, cops, crushing filth with the river pollution burning, burning. Kent Taylor and d a levy. One tiger and one tiger. Tyger tyger burning bright.

spotlight

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Cleveland Poetry Scenes

by Leonard Trawick, Kark Kuhar, Langston Hughes, d.a.levy, Hart Crane

Amazon Price: $15.56 (as of 10/07/2008)
List Price: $19.95

Editorial Reviews

Review
Poetry has a long and living history in Cleveland, Ohio, and this examination of its past through the lens of its vibrant present is a treasure in and of itself. They are all here, the great ones who showed the way: Langston Hughes, d.a.levy, Alberta Turner, Robert Wallace, Daniel Thompson. They set the bar pretty high. But as the editors demonstrate, their sons and daughters carry on, bringing the word to the city s streets and universities, libraries and coffee houses. from Ron Antonucci, Cleveland Public Library literature director. --Cleveland Public Library, book jacket

Product Description
The book is comprised of articles from 20 collaborators in specialized areas. Following editor Smith s detailed 33-page Chronology of Cleveland Poetry Scenes 1945-2008 are articles on the Cleveland Underground Poetry of the 1960s by Kent Taylor, a poetry scene memoir of 1974-1984 by Diane Kendig, Suzanne DeGaetano on Mac s Backs Bookstore, and profiles of other poetry venues by George Bilgere, Mark Kuhar, Vince Robinson, Steve Goldberg, and Q-Nice. Performance poetry is covered by editor Weems and includes profiles of Slam Poetry by Michael Salinger and Ray McNiece, and the Black Poetic Society by Daniel Gray-Kontar. Poetry organizations covered include editor Gibans on the Poets and Writers League of Greater Cleveland, Cleveland State University Poetry Center by Leonard Trawick, Cuyahoga Community College by Robert McDonough, and Case Western Reserve by P.K. Saha. The independent scene is covered by Mike Gill and Bree Bodnar. Web-sites is treated by Mark Kuhar, Larry Smith on Small Presses. Cleveland poets assembled are Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Alberta Turner, Robert Wallace, James C. Kilgore, Barbara Angell, Cyril Dostal, poet rebel d.a.levy, and Cuyahoga County poet laureate Daniel Thompson. Poets born in the 1930s and 40s include Russell Atkins, Grace Butcher, Bonnie Jacobson, Leonard Trawick, Nina Freedlander Gibans, and Robert McDonough, Steven B. Smith, Meredith Holmes, Jim Lang, Christopher Franke, Tom Kryss, Susan Grimm, and Sara Holbrook. The group of poets born in the 1950s and 60s include Mary E. Weems, Ray McNiece, Mwatabu Okantah, Katie Daley, Wendy Schaffer, Mary Player, Ben Gulyas, Kristen Ban Tepper, Amy Sparks, Michael Salinger, Terry Provost, and Mark Kuhar. The most contemporary group consists of Kelly Harris, Bree Bodner, Adam Brodsky, Kisha Foster, Rafeeq Washington, Daniel Gray-Kontar, and Douglas (Sage) Hoston.

Release Date: 12/31/1969

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Bibliography edited by Alan Horvath and Kent Taylor

Bibliography of Compilations of work by d.a. levy published by other presses: d.a.levy COMPILATIONS: Bibliography edited by Alan Horvath and Kent Taylor BIBLIO PUBLICATION

links

deep cleveland: Era Books & Magazines and Photography Exhibit of d.a. levy and Cleveland ... In Oct. 2002 he organized a national d.a.levy Celebration in Cleveland's Flats. ...
Tracing the Places of d.a levy: Tracing the Places of d.a. levy (1942-1968). Cleveland Poet-at-Large "An exterior of normalcy". "i still have a city to cover with lines" ...
The Works of d. a. levy: A Preliminary Checklist of the Writings of d.a. levy (1942-1968) by JAMES R. LOWELL DEAR D.A., Well, old friend, the sackcloth of respectability has been ...
Cleveland Memory : Search Results: One of Cleveland's first alternative newspapers, The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle was published by local rebel poet d.a. levy from 1967 ...
Kent Taylor - the Poet, the Friend: Kent Taylor was an integral part of this underground movement. Born Paul Kent Taylor on November 8, 1940, he and his mother survived a very complicated ...
d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press Post on IMEEM: d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press Outside Voices (Brooklyn, N.Y.) Readings from poets in the forthcoming The Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of ...
HarmonySeriesBooks/bottom dog press: He was part of the Cleveland poetry scene in the Sixties that had d.a. levy as its catalyst and got hammered hard by the police%u2026What Tom Kryss does, ...
d.a.levy publications - a bibliography: P-03 MORE WITHDRAWED OR LESS | d.a. levy | Feb-63 | Renegade Press | 35 | 100 | Letterpress | Stapled - Saddlestitch | Different color inks on printed pages ...
LISTSERV 15.5 - deep cleveland: Subject: d.a. levy and 1960s Lit. Conf. in Cleveland ... hi all, d.a. levy & the 1960s Literary & Cultural Scene in Cleveland: (a symposium & celebration) ...
The da levy Collection at Cleveland Memory: (clevelad state)Digital Collections: Acknowledging levy's historical significance in Cleveland's underground, poetry and alternative press scene, the CSU Library is building a da levy ...
DETRITUS PRESS: The greater part of a year has passed since I last added anything to the Detritus Press--partially because I was otherwise occupied with the drama that ...
Kent Taylor bibliography: Kent Taylor bibliography includes books, contributions to periodicals & anthologies, etc..