Joe Taylor (1)

Rating: 4.5* of five

THE PUBLISHER SENT ME A REVIEW COPY. ALSO, I'VE KNOWN THE AUTHOR FOR A QUARTER CENTURY.

My Review: But anyone who's ever had a chance to hear my mouth on the subject of poetry knows that the best a friend who commits versification can hope for is silence from my general direction. It's better than what I'm likely to say, I assure you.

The sharp-eyed among y'all will note that this is a review, and carries a star rating, and isn't a bad rating at all. What gives? Well gather round, kiddies, and let Uncle Daddy tell you a little tale.

Waaaaaay back in the Mists of Time, I was a literary agent. A manuscript sailed over the transom one day, a humorous and bitter comedic romp about the North American Executive council of witches and their attempts to come to grips with a very, very bad madre of a witch in Florida (where else?) who was upsetting the cosmic balance in a big, nasty way. I was hooked. This was a decade before the paranormal book boom and I was sure the sheer verve and delight of the novel could ignite a movement.

Publishers disagreed.

It was Joe Taylor's manuscript that I couldn't, to my eternal chagrin, sell. But never mind, Joe was publishing good books via Livingston Press! Maybe I could, you know, movies or...but no. Sad to say, nothing ever eventuated except my snarky correspondence with Joe and a number of laugh-out-loud funny phone calls over the years.

So one fine day not so long ago, I got a missive from Joe telling me about this wizard idea he had for a comic novel about quantum mechanics (he's prone to saying things like that, I wasn't especially worried) where the End of the World was going to be brought about. Uh-huh, sounds cool, I said. Then Joe said IT: "I'm going to write it in rhyming quatrains."

"Are you out of your MIND? Joe, do you not WANT people to read your stuff?!" I shouted at my computer screen as I typed those very words.

Having heard the identical sentiments from me before about his dialect novel Oldcat and Ms. Puss, Joe tinkled a merry laugh and went about committing versification concerning quantum physics and the End of the World.

It's a darn good thing he doesn't listen to me. This is a comic novel of sharp, biting wit. This is poetry *about* something, not just it's own pit-sniffin' self. This is what Daniel Defoe would be doing were his rotting zombie corpse to get access to a PC and a blogging platform.

It's impossible to quote poetry in a review. Well, damn near. And narrative poetry? Fuggeddaboudit.

It was a dark and bleary night. Which means,
I s'pose, Ol' Sol done gave it a rest.
Dave's dad, bandanna in teeth, was last Sol'd seen.
Now Ms. Moon watches two Hansons, a harsher test.

Do you think, by the way, sun and moon
communicate? Morse code? Telepathy?
Ah, but I promised no spiritual loony tune.
Still, it'd be nice to think they share empathy.

Nice layers of humor in there, doncha think? Suns and sons and moons and loonys...Joe knows how to make a word nerd grin, always has, and bless his cotton socks for it.

Will this book light everyone's fire? Nope. Will it light yours? If you're reading my blog, chances are it will. *I* liked a book of poetry! Even Joe was gobsmacked about that. Go on, be a devil, try out a small indie press's big indie author's seriously weird novel-in-verse. Hey, even if you hate it, you're gonna score big on the cooler-than-thou meter (see what I did there? haw) just having it on the coffee table.… (more)

The Book Report: Thirteen richly imagined stories in a fourth collection of same from Alabama's weirdest living writer, Dr. Joe Taylor. 'Nuff said.

My Review: Full disclosure: I liked Joe Taylor's writing so much that, twenty years ago when I was a literary agent, I took it on and flogged it all over New York. Then as now, safe sells, so Joe and I parted company sadder but wiser. Well, I was, anyway, and not to mention highly entertained by getting to read his stuff first.

Well, Joe's still Joe, albeit older'n dirt and about as pretty these days (really, dude! that author photo!); his eye is still sharp as a flensing knife, though. Stories truly are everywhere in Joe Taylor's world. God help you if you're expecting them to be predictable, or soothing, or bland. They're as unsettling to read as Magritte's paintings are to study. They're packed tight and extra-full, like any good shot that's got to take out the elephant of complacent reading; this book is a laser-sighted musket, focused and powerfully loaded but using for its own ends the fine, old-style craftsmanship of storytelling.

My recommended starter story: "Highway One, Revisited" (despite the fact that it's not the first story of the collection), which begins:

"Sooner or later, it's a dead end, you might philosophically assert. You might say this even as you hear glass shatter ahead, even as you later come upon a six pack of beer bottles snapped across that highway like gaseous stellar matter novaed across the Crab Nebula."

That's pretty much what you are in for; buy the ticket for a mere $20, spend the day surfing the waves and crests of Joe's skewed (his word! his word!) imagination instead of the Internet. Time well spent.… (more)