Keith Taylor – författare

A lyrical and accessible collection that explores both the landscape of Michigan and the inner life of one person who lives there.

If the World Becomes So Bright is a powerful new collection from accomplished Michigan poet Keith Taylor. In an approachable, intimate, and contemplative voice, Taylor''s poems offer quiet observation of the landscapes the poet encounters. His poems reflect a Romantic sensibility and a modern inventiveness as he travels from Michigan to Cape Hatteras to the Irish countryside and moves in reflection from uncritical observation to self-questioning to exultations of gratitude and peace. The world—however small and immediate—becomes bright in this collection, as Taylor''s careful lines trace our connections with the mundane but important details of our lives, details found in the natural environment, with family members, and in our daily habits.

If the World Becomes So Bright is filled with the fauna and flora of Michigan wilderness, even when that wilderness is no farther away than the backyard. Taylor explores picturesque settings like Isle Royale in the Upper Peninsula, the waters of Lake Michigan, and his home in Ann Arbor, as well as settings that are a world away, all with a reverent and careful eye. He also trains the same studied observation on his inner world as he wrestles with the meanings of everyday occurrences, like visiting a deserted churchyard, following the migrations of birds through his yard, and watching his daughter grow up. Taylor''s voice throughout is insightful and curious, always thankful, and sometimes self-deprecating, sharing lessons while reflecting on all that is left to learn.

Readers will recognize in If the World Becomes So Bright not only a real and familiar speaker but also universal themes of insecurity, deliberation, and discovery. General readers of poetry, as well as fans of Taylor''s other work, will enjoy If the World Becomes So Bright.

Tales of the ghostly and supernatural by some of Michigan’s finest fiction writers.

For Ghost Writers: Us Haunting Them editors Keith Taylor and Laura Kasischke asked twelve celebrated Michigan writers to submit new stories on one subject: ghosts. The resulting collection is a satisfying mix of tales by some of the state''s most well-known and award-winning writers. Some of the pieces are true stories written by non-believers, while others are clearly fiction and can be funny, bittersweet, spooky, or sinister. All share Michigan as a setting, bringing history and a sense of place to the eerie collection.

Ghosts in these stories have a wide range of motivations and cause a variety of consequences. In some cases, they seem to dwell in one person''s consciousness, as in Steve Amick''s "Not Even Lions and Tigers," and other times they demonstrate their presence with tangible evidence, as in Laura Hulthen Thomas''s "Bones on Bois Blanc." Spirits sometimes appear in order to communicate something important to the living, as in James Hynes''s "Backseat Driver" and Lolita Hernandez''s "Making Bakes," to change the course of events, as in Anne-Marie Oomen''s "Bitchathane," or to cause characters to look inside themselves, as in Elizabeth Schmuhl''s "Belief." The supernatural stories in Ghost Writers visit a mix of Michigan locations, from the urban, to the suburban, and rural. Authors find ghosts in family farmhouses, downtown Detroit streets, an abandoned northern Michigan lighthouse, gracious Grosse Pointe homes, a mid-Michigan apartment complex, and the crypt of a Polish priest in the small town of Cross Village.

Taylor and Kasischke have assembled a collection with a diverse mixture of settings, tones, and styles, ensuring that Ghost Writers will appeal to all readers of fiction, particularly those interested in the newest offerings from Michigan''s best fiction writers.

Short poems that look closely at small moments in a personal history, in art, and in the natural world.

"A Bird-while. In a natural chronometer, a Bird-while may be admitted as one of the metres, since the space most of the wild birds will allow you to make your observations on them when they alight near you in the woods, is a pretty equal and familiar measure" (Ralph Waldo Emerson''s Journal, 1838). Without becoming didactic or pedantic about the spiritual metaphor hidden in the concept of the "bird-while," Keith Taylor''s collection evokes certain Eastern meditative poets who often wrote in an aphoristic style of the spirit or the mind mirroring specific aspects of the natural world.

The Bird-while is a collection of forty-nine poems that meditate on the nature—both human and non-human—that surrounds us daily. Taylor is in the company of naturalist poets such as Gary Snyder and Mary Oliver—poets who often drew from an Emersonian sensibility to create art that awakens the mind to its corresponding truths in the natural world. The book ranges from the longer poem to the eight line, unrhymed stanza similar to that of the T''ang poet Han-Shan. And without section breaks to reinforce the passing of time, the collection creates greater fluidity of movement from one poem to the next, as if there is no beginning or end, only an eternal moment that is suspended on the page. Tom Pohrt''s original illustrations are scattered throughout the text, adding a stunning visual element to the already vivid language. The book moves from the author''s travel accounts to the destruction of the natural world, even species extinction, to more hopeful poems of survival and the return of wildness. The natural rhythm is at times marred by the disturbances of the twenty-first century that come blaring into these meditations, as when a National Guard jet rumbles over the treeline upsetting a hummingbird, and yet, even the hummingbird is able to regain its balance and continue as before. At its core, Taylor''s collection is a reminder of Emerson''s idea that natural facts are symbols of spiritual facts.

These well-crafted poems will be easily accessible to any literary audience, with a more particular attraction to readers of contemporary poetry sensitive to the marriage of an Eastern sensibility with contemporary American settings and scenes.

Keith Taylor has undertaken a thorough study of the full range of writings by the brilliant French thinker Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825), including his unpublished manuscripts, and the result is the first comprehensive and truly representative selection in English from the works of this founding father of social science and socialism, whose ideas exerted a formative influence on such major and diverse intellectual figures as Comte, Proudhon, Marx and Engels, Herzen, Carlyle and Durkheim. When Saint-Simon''s writings first appeared, they aroused little more than amusement and curiosity. The ideas they contained – ideas concerning the application of scientific method to the study of man and society, the coming of the new ''scientific-industrial'' age in which the State would assume responsibility for promoting social welfare, the prospects for international cooperation and integration in Europe, man''s need for a secular religion – were widely dismissed. But the boldness and originality of Saint-Simon''s work had a lasting impact on subsequent thinkers and played a major role in the development of European social thought throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries.

Keith Taylor''s introductory essay places Saint-Simon''s writings in their proper historical context, offers a penetrating reassessment of their significance as a contribution to social theory, and considers the extent of their influence on modern thought. It indicates the inadequacies of many previous interpretations of Saint-Simon''s thinking, and highlights, in particular, the tendency of most recent commentators to disregard some crucial features of his political philosophy. This selection is an essential insight into a modern understanding of Saint-Simon from a young English scholar. Nowhere else in English may be found so wide-ranging a selection from Saint-Simon''s writings presenting such a balanced view of his thought.

Keith Taylor has undertaken a thorough study of the full range of writings by the brilliant French thinker Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825), including his unpublished manuscripts, and the result is the first comprehensive and truly representative selection in English from the works of this founding father of social science and socialism, whose ideas exerted a formative influence on such major and diverse intellectual figures as Comte, Proudhon, Marx and Engels, Herzen, Carlyle and Durkheim. When Saint-Simon''s writings first appeared, they aroused little more than amusement and curiosity. The ideas they contained – ideas concerning the application of scientific method to the study of man and society, the coming of the new ''scientific-industrial'' age in which the State would assume responsibility for promoting social welfare, the prospects for international cooperation and integration in Europe, man''s need for a secular religion – were widely dismissed. But the boldness and originality of Saint-Simon''s work had a lasting impact on subsequent thinkers and played a major role in the development of European social thought throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries.

Keith Taylor''s introductory essay places Saint-Simon''s writings in their proper historical context, offers a penetrating reassessment of their significance as a contribution to social theory, and considers the extent of their influence on modern thought. It indicates the inadequacies of many previous interpretations of Saint-Simon''s thinking, and highlights, in particular, the tendency of most recent commentators to disregard some crucial features of his political philosophy. This selection is an essential insight into a modern understanding of Saint-Simon from a young English scholar. Nowhere else in English may be found so wide-ranging a selection from Saint-Simon''s writings presenting such a balanced view of his thought.