Snow Falling on Water

Any poet who assembles a Selected Poems is saying, "This is the best I've been able to give you." And behind this statement stands the hope of endurance, of permanence on the shelves and in the lives of readers. What keeps us tuned in to Richard Taylor's poems? As Michael Moran says in his smart and insightful Introduction, "Taylor's intense attention and his rendering of that attention into unexpected images and metaphors can startle us and help us see the world differently." Taylor's interplay of image and sound shows us how lovingly deep language can strike. His poems matter.

Snow Falling on Water is an excellent introduction to Richard Taylor's poems. He writes with deep acumen and great humility about the mysteries of the world, both outer and inner, past and present. A recurrent image in his poems is that of new fallen snow which is then tracked across, leaving us with footprints, an image which becomes a blank page the writer fills with words. Taylor's tracks, his words, are a great blessing and lead us to the possibility of a previously unimagined communion with the world.

Snow Falling on Water, the title of Richard Taylor's new and selected poems, gives us an image of natural beauty and transience. It invites us to imagine a moment of ongoing change, of transformation, and it engages the senses, the feelings, the mind as it begins to sketch a scene and cast a spell. I love the title, and I already admire the author. Richard Taylor is a master of sketching scenes and casting spells, a poet with the ability to see clearly and deeply into nature, and this includes human nature, and to share what he finds there. If, as Jane Hirshfield has said, "the poet's work is the clarification and magnification of being," Richard Taylor's poems in Snow Falling on Water present the good work of a lifetime of clear and thoughtful seeing and speaking, a trustworthy and enriching voice and vision.