Night Physics

by Kent Taylor. 2002 75 copies only. A. Horvath. Kirpan Press, P.O. Box 2943, Vancouver, WA. 98668.

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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.

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