Background
He was born in Guthrie Center, Iowa.
("During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Taggart was the e...)
"During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Taggart was the editor and publisher of Maps, an acclaimed literary magazine. In 1978, edited an issue of "Truck" devoted to the work of Theodore Enslin. His work has been widely published and anthologized, and as far back as 1978 his unique style was exerting an influence over his peers, poets such as Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Gil Ott."
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(Poetry. In THERE ARE BIRDS, John Taggart explores the mea...)
Poetry. In THERE ARE BIRDS, John Taggart explores the meaning of being singular though a range of American precursors: poets such as Marianne Moore and Louis Zukofsky, "nature boys" John and William Bartram, musicians, photographers, and private detectives. As Nathaniel Mackey writes, "Beautifully, indelibly, THERE ARE BIRDS advances a notational method and measure all its own-part flight, part aesthetic tractatus, part lab report. More compunction than consolation but a long sorrow song as well, it plies a bracing, severe tonic both iterative and terse, a work of uncanny stretch and compression."
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(Songs of Degrees brings together 19 related essays on con...)
Songs of Degrees brings together 19 related essays on contemporary American poetry and poetics, published as journal articles between 1975 and 1989, by poet and theorist John Taggart. Over the past two decades, Taggart has been a significant intellectual and artistic force for a number of major American poets. By focusing on the work of several major and less well-known American experimental poets from the 1930s to the present, Taggart not only traces the origins and evolution of this experimental tendency in recent poetry, but also develops new theoretical tools for reading and appreciating these innovative and complex works. The essays are written from the engaged perspective of an active poet for other poets, as well as for those who would like to read and think about poetry in a participatory fashion. The essays thus present “inside narratives” of some of the most challenging contemporary American poetry. The range of Songs of Degrees extends from the Black Mountain poets Charles Olson and Robert Duncan to such “language poets as Bruce Andres and Susan Howe. Taggart closely examines the work of the objectivist poets George Oppen and Louis Zukofsky. Three essays are devoted to each of these poets, providing detailed readings of individual poems and considerations of each poet’s overall achievement. Taggart also concentrates on poets whose work has not been widely recognized or is only now beginning to be recognized. These include Theodore Enslin, Frank Samperi, and William Bronk. Taggart’s essay “Reading William Bronk” is the first extensive reading of this relatively unknown but truly outstanding poet. Taggart’s essays also focus on his own poetry. He describes the composition process and the thinking behind it, as well as the poet’s own evolving sense of what the poem can and ought to be. These very personal reflections are unique in their attention to current questions concerning form and the issue of spiritual vision. Avoiding political and cultural reductionism, Taggart throughout keeps his eye—and heart—on the poetic, singing his own “Songs of Degrees,” even as he discovers notes of the same music in the works of other.
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( Is Musica major retrospective of an American original...)
Is Musica major retrospective of an American originalgathers the best poems from John Taggart’s fourteen volumes, ranging from early objectivist experiments and jazz-influenced improvisational pieces to longer breathtaking compositions regarded as underground masterpieces. There is a prayerful quality to Taggart’s poetry, rooted in musicfrom medieval Christian traditions and soul to American punk rock. He is also heavily influenced by the visual arts, most notably in his classic Slow Song for Mark Rothko,” in which he did with words what Rothko did with paint and dye. "A fearsome intelligence wedded to a kind of craftsmanship that happens once or twice a generation."Stop Press In the lovely sonnet Orange Berries Dark Green Leaves,’ Taggart seems to look at nature himself, rather than through another artist’s eyes: Darkened not completely dark let us walk in the darkened field/trees in the field outlined against that which is less dark.’ Is Music contains many such pieces, a wealth of sublime and quiet poems; they are unlike anything being written today, and like good music they stay in the mind.”The Antioch Review "John Taggart has long been a master of accumulating complexly layered patterns of sound and sense."Robert Creeley John Taggart’s poetry is not like music, it is music.”George Oppen "The long overdue selection of John Taggart’s work, Is Music, reminds us that a good deal of his work, in cutting new songs from old, is transcription. Marvin Gaye Suite’ opens with the opening of the soul singer’s album, What’s Going On: 17 seconds of party formulaics by professional football players / intro of 17 seconds of hey man what’s happening and right on.’ Like Gaye’s voice throughout the album, the voice in Taggart’s poemand this is true throughout his work is multitracked into a call and response with itself and with the world.”Sink To breathe and stretch one’s arms again to breathe through the mouth to breathe to breathe through the mouth to utter in the most quiet way not to whisper not to whisper to breathe through the mouth in the most quiet way to breathe to sing to breathe to sing to breathe to sing the most quiet way. To sing to light the most quiet light in darkness radiantia radiantia singing light in darkness. To sing as the host sings in his house. John Taggart is the author of fourteen books of poetry and two books of criticism. He was, for many years, a professor of English and director of the Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Shippensburg University. He lives near Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155659304X/?tag=2022091-20
(John Taggart's WHEN THE SAINTS is a major long poem dedic...)
John Taggart's WHEN THE SAINTS is a major long poem dedicated to the memory of his friend, the sculptor Bradford Graves (1939-1998). Taggart, whose writing was long ago recognized by such peers as Robert Duncan and George Oppen, brings to the work a musical precision. As in music, Taggart allows his work to circle through repeated phrases, but he always returns to the eloquence extracted from single, simple, hard-won statements.
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(In Pastorelles, John Taggart draws on the local culture o...)
In Pastorelles, John Taggart draws on the local culture of rural Pennsylvania to consider the permutations of the human mark. An abandoned one-room schoolhouse, a page from an accounting ledger, a covered bridge still in use: each offers a 'glance / perhaps all that was ever possible' into what persists. With wry humor, these poems attend to the ecology of language in a season of drought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/097469021X/?tag=2022091-20
He was born in Guthrie Center, Iowa.
He graduated with honors in 1965 from Earlham College in Indiana, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy. In English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Chicago, and in 1974 he completed a Doctor of Philosophy in the Humanities Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Syracuse University.
In 1966 he received a Master of Arts During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Taggart was the editor and publisher of Maps, an acclaimed literary magazine. In 1978, edited an issue of "Truck" devoted to the work of Theodore Enslin. His work has been widely published and anthologized, and as far back as 1978 his unique style was exerting an influence over his peers, poets such as Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Gil Ott.
Foreign many years he was Professor of English and Director of the Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Shippensburg University.
He retired in 2001.
Taggart"s approach to the poem is strongly rooted in Objectivist poetics, particularly the works of Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen. Unlike most others of his generation whose poetries sprung from similar influences, Taggart stayed away from, on the one hand, the mainstream variations of the neatly packaged imagistic poem, and, on the other hand, the aggressively language-centered writing that foregrounded the materiality of text over the voice of the author
( Is Musica major retrospective of an American original...)
(Songs of Degrees brings together 19 related essays on con...)
(John Taggart's WHEN THE SAINTS is a major long poem dedic...)
(In Pastorelles, John Taggart draws on the local culture o...)
("During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Taggart was the e...)
(Brand New. In Stock. Will be shipped from US. Excellent C...)
(Poetry. In THERE ARE BIRDS, John Taggart explores the mea...)