To Let the Sun
John Allen Taylor
Belletristik / Lyrik, Dramatik
Beschreibung
Finalist, 2025 Miller Williams Poetry PrizeJohn Allen Taylor s debut poetry collection To Let the Sun opens with an invitation both generous and resolute: take a walk with me . . . I hope you ll come / though I am going anyway. These poems peel back the layers of recovery as an adult from childhood sexual abuse, the myriad ways a body can change to protect itself from memory, and the difficulty of looking at abuse head-on. Taylor uses a poetics of reclamation to write the child-self from a perspective beyond trauma, to document the messiness of survival, the child s flight from himself, and the uncertain path home to a life filled with small and perfect things. Through hermit crabs and golden pothos, fungal gnats and beet seed, the speaker reclaims himself: I am not lost . . . I know memory / is not healed by time, but / by the oddities / with which we adorn our lives, / the fragilities we need to know / we re needed by.
