Rift Zone

February 17, 2020
In the preface to the ambitious third book from Taylor (The Forage House), Ilya Kaminsky describes the work as “many investigations of American fear.” While fear may be a subtext to these poems, they are an exploration of American violence and fragility, amplified by the fact that the poet lives in El Cerrito, Calif., a city that sits atop the Hayward Fault. Taylor’s poems are often made up of multiple sections, in a controlled sprawl that mirrors the area about which she writes so richly. A descendant of Thomas Jefferson, Taylor explores her own identity, reminding readers of the foundation and origins of American violence. One poem opens with “Tonight the train shuts for another death./ Jumper: Third this month,” and it is followed by another that begins “& after the vermillion opera curtain/ rose on Giovanni raping/ the tiny distant woman on the stage,/ we drank champagne at intermission.” In these layered poems, Taylor often steps beyond herself to address her own privilege: “Sometimes I think that all/ privilege is/ is some safer vantage/ for watching the trauma, America, happen,” she observes. Taylor vividly and memorably renders the complexities of an America of violence and rifts.

Starred review from June 1, 2020

In her third volume of poems (following Work & Days), NPR online poetry reviewer Taylor examines what it means to live close to the edge, both symbolically and in the real world. Growing up on the Hayward Fault, near El Cerrito, CA, she knows what it's like to live on the edge, whether she's surviving the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 or raising children in a country and a world that seem on the verge of collapsing underfoot: "Below us the crust is molten, is nationless.// We light only our lamps on the rift." Conversational and sometimes personal, Taylor's verse always comes across as fresh and lyrical. She includes poems built on fragments that reflect what it might feel like to have the earth shift beneath you--"We are animal/ in the broken ecosystem"--even as she offers readers another look at what's broken beneath us. Here, readers encounter rampant violence, the "war" at the border, and issues of ecology and equity, and she asks us to consider the large questions and small: "Even in the face// of devastation// we must make art. VERDICT An important book to consider and savor. [See "Versifying," LJ 1/20.]--Karla Huston, Appleton, WI

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