Understanding fiction

the long version

In his first poetry collection since winning the Pulitzer Price for The Flying Change, Henry Taylor beautifully renders the vicissitudes of love, friendship, and vocation. Often using the craft of writing as a metaphor for the examined life, Taylor explores with wry wisdom the slow-dawning awareness of our evanescence. In Understanding Fiction we find gentle regret for time spent dabbling, time spent away from the work that should rightfully claim our passion. Indeed, to understand the fictions with which we cloak our endeavors is ultimately to make what peace we can with the "consequences of ignorant choices."