Pastorelles

by John Taggart

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 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.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2004

About the author

an American poet and critic.

Reviews

[Amira Hanafi]

Taggart's use of repetition in this cycle of poems mostly drawing from the natural world is startling; at first it seems simple but builds in complexity by mere accumulation.

[Zack]

What initially attracted me to Taggart's work when I read two books of his from the early 90s is what he does with sound. The urgency of it, the ecstatic push of it, the musical incantatory of it. Pastorelles was written in the early 2000s. All the sound facets of the early 90s work is still there, but it is subtle and constrained in a really beautiful way; it takes a bit of a back seat to other facets of the work. what other facets? what sticks out most is his use of images. Many of the poems in the book are dominated by a single striking image, often weird and unusual, often beautiful. I'm bailing out now. There's other things I could say but I should think a bit more first...but yes, very good and different from the other two books i read by him....

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

hello is a sign for rural engine going ruraler, ruraler between trees mud roads kinds of flowers kinds of. hello johnny sign language make me present in fields of kinds of flowers, present maker exuding, present bolts of fabric and tell me what. johnny maker break lines inevitable ability to break off curry favor quorum favors there are the birds. swooping in the latticework. i guess. i guess. i guess. works.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous inside and out, magic photographs (by John's wife Jennifer) that correspond, everything corresponds to poems and places and radical backslash juxtapositions.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some musical bits to this, but it leaves me with a rotten taste on the whole. It feels unbalanced and largely leaves me wanting more images and conflict. It seems as though this is a fun language experiment, rather than a complete book of poems.