The Goat

Taylor's New York poems comprise a roughly virtuosic series of contemporary vignettes laced with apocalypse; they are attuned to the pain in all desire and the beauty in decay--not unlike Lorca's explorations of the city. Beginning ""one of those nights/ when the intersection is crazy/ with cars,"" and moving swiftly through casual, but angst-tinged observation--Taylor's second collection portrays people on the economic and social fringes, from the ""Old Soldier in the Park"" (""his white hair flying/ against the green,/ a bird out of formation"") to the pathetic story of ""Sleepy,"" about a mother who spots her son's face on a wanted poster. Sometimes Taylor has a lighter touch (""the snow has no philosophy/ but to fall for two days straight""), but he can also cross the line into overstatement, as in his poem ""A Witness,"" dedicated to the then-U.S.poet laureate Robert Hass: ""He had undertaken the job as caretaker/ to his country's eloquence, in charge/ of its rhymes, its supersititions/ in the year of the most stars pitched/ most children abused."" Finding no easy answers, yet never letting his lyrical and painterly gifts spiral off into irrelevance, Taylor remains true to his desire to get his world on paper, a world of New York and beyond that continues to be inflected by his Trinidadian roots: ""He feels for a taste/ of his own flesh, he can smell it all the time,/ cooking in the curry of a human dream."" (July)