Brian Taylor — Vienna 1978

I have thought to place this text on line, because it has long been out of print, and when rare used copies show up the asking price is ten times what the book originally sold for.

The poems collected in Transit are for the most part from the 'seventies and early 'eighties, though some were begun before I left Europe in 1968. I was fortunate enough to be invited to submit the manuscript by Alan Ross, the editor of London Magazine , the literary review of the arts that had recently been publishing little poetry books, tall and narrow and wrapped in thick brown paper with what looked like stenciled lettering on their cover. Loving their look and their feel, I had bought three or four of the booklets in England and thought them very modique, very early-'sixties, but more Terence Conran than Mary Quant. I particularly enjoyed two LM Editions by Brian Jones (evidently not a Rolling Stone), but he seems to have disappeared after 1973.

In 1983, Ross published two of my poems in his magazine, and when I sent him others he accepted one of them, but it wasn't printed as promised, so I wrote to ask what was happening. His response was apologetic: in tidying his office desk, a cleaning lady—a heavy drinker—had thrown away a stack of papers that included poems and contributors' addresses, mine among them. When I resubmitted "Thornfield Avenue," Ross asked if I had enough poems for a book.

Transit , published a year later, had a glossy pink and aqua cover. I had hoped for earth tones, but Ross was probably correct in thinking the colors of nineteen-'thirties bathroom tiles and toilet soap more appropriate. Perhaps because I lived so far away from my publisher, the layout—even in a second printing—was far from satisfactory. Among other flaws, the table of contents did not include page numbers. I was nevertheless pleased to see over fifty poems in print, and in the ensuing years I was grateful for Alan Ross's encouragement and hospitality. Though I might not have heeded his suggestion that I be less obscure in my allusions, I did follow his example by putting Angostura bitters in my gin and tonic.

The publisher's blurb included the following: "Most of the poems…are narratives, sequences of events that are implicitly excerpted from some longer work that might be an unwritten novel or film script. At the same time they relate to the effect created by multiple screens in a drive-in movie theatre. The characters, though appearing in various disguises, remain the writer and the women who beguile and betray him, prompting melodramatic gestures that end in disaster. Accepting Sandburg's notion that poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits, Taylor uses a cinematic technique, editing his microdramas with a calculated disregard for historical or geographical continuity. By doing so, he affirms the essential pertinence to each present moment of memory and dream, whether collective or personal."

I will not quarrel with this description except insofar as it characterizes the author as a bit of a sad-sack in the presence of women. This may or may not characterize the author, but I always thought my poems were humorous. In signing copies for friends, I would customarily express the hope that they would "find something herein to entertain and amuse." I don't know if anyone chortled, but I do know that Transit (which—like all LM Editions—was not distributed in the United States) elicited few reviews and that for two decades I rarely looked at its contents. I do recall that at one early public reading a woman in the audience muttered "Sexist!" I believe her indignation was triggered by my mentioning the color of women's underclothing, perhaps not a concern that a man should admit to in the early nineteen-'nineties.

Arguably, the collection should have contained only "Ways of Henut Wedjbu." The opening poem, "Pedigree," serves as a suitable introduction to the poet's immediate ancestry, but maybe the other poems belong to a different collection. That's not for me to say, but I have noticed that poets who publish a slim volume every year or two now aim at more coherence within each book.

I will be asked to explain the allusions to Henut and Amelia-Anne. I could explain, and indeed I have written an essay on what happened to the mummified remains of Henut; however, I don't think further elaboration would be of service to the reader.

SAINT LOUIS, 2006