Judith Taylor's poems are funny, scary, and startling both because of the emotion they reveal and the language they are woven from. The women of Curios transcend limitation even when they still think they're surrounded by it, and in showing this Taylor allows her readers to transcend limitation too.

Taylor's work is a canny combination of candor and deceptions, illusions, allusions and assertions deftly rendered into short poems that take up much more space in the world than one might think from looking at them. For the most part, she effaces narrative: "I believe in plot, my dear, only when it suits me." She provides both the words and the gaps. Lacunae are not seconds for the reader to breathe, but absences that become part of each poem's strange logic. She devises and assembles details that immediately become the crux, liminal fringe that becomes the essence of a situation. You'll hear echoes of Louise Bogan and James Tate, of humor and bewilderment, weariness, acceptance and defiance. There is beauty in both the vehicle and subject of these poems. In the absence of ligature is a study of loss and desire. As you read, the lines that you will start to memorize add up: "I can't stop computing the long division of my sadness" and "In time, the world begins to shape your stubbourn mind." The pleasures and provocations of this poetry are bountiful.

Believe the blurbs and promo copy on this book. Judith Taylor has pulled off a marvelously original collection of poems that are simultaneously eerie, witty, and profound. And she succeeds in spite of following none of the usual poetry workshop precepts: there's no sense of place, no meter, none of the usual topics. Each poem is written in seven or eight lines, each end-stopped, and the effect is dramatic. Thank you Sarabande Books for defying convention and publishing this work.

Those of us who have enjoyed California olives for a long time will read many previously unknown facts about this complicated and risky agricultural pursuit.

Dr. Taylor has obviously spent long hours and many miles in her research of the subject. The Bibliography alone consumes 20 pages! Furthermore, there are 10 pages of Acknowledgements.

The end result is a comprehensive chronicle of olives in California with a strong emphasis on ripe olive processes (both olive oil and pickled in cans). Her writing style reflects a love of the subject.

Judith Taylor's poems creep up on you. You read them as you might listen to a dream retold, hearing at first only the conversational tone, the charm, gradually seized by the imagery. Imagine that--gradually seized, an event that could only take place in a dream, or in a book. Her poems are full of knowledge worn easily, experience held lightly; they give you more than you expected, and never give away too much. Her love poems, written in response to Japanese medieval and 17th century literature, are especially beautiful, and to this reader, especially pertinent. Her mood sonnets (14 line poems, each line a complete sentence) are reminiscent of her first book, Curios, but are more playful, relaxed and diverse in tone.

This book starts out in Idaho. It's about a woman named Sacagawea, who was taken away from her family. A few of her friends left her. The men who came for her called her bird woman.
Sacagawea got married when she was 15 and had a baby. She guided Lewis and Clark across the Western United States. They had to map it out for Thomas Jefferson after the Lousianna Purchase. It took a long time for them to travel to the Pacific and back. She was a huge help to them because she knew what food was safe to eat and what to use for injuries, and helped communicate to the Native Americans they encountered along the way. Lewis and Clark and her took a ship to find here family and they did. Lewis shot himself. Sacagawea died in1896. I think another title for this book should be The Life About Sacagawea. I think she should have lived longer. I will like to tell people to read this book because it's a great educational book. The best part was when she had her baby. The part that I didn't like was when she died. She is a true American heroine.

The authors of this book have a lot of good ideas for garden and landscape design. There are many color photos and illustrations that show lots of examples of the concepts they discuss. It's a great book for design ideas. My big complaint, and the reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 5 is that the authors evidently consider Iowa a southern state. They talk a lot about how much cold a plant can handle, but they never once even consider that many of the plants they talk about can't survive in states like California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Louisianna, So. Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Missippi, Hawaii, or large portions of many other states. If you live in any of these states and are looking for a book to help you choose particular plants for your garden this is not the book for you. They are so oblivious to the southern zones that they left off the bottom range on every zone reference. The result is that this book is only good for northern climates when it comes to plant selection. Only buy this book if you want design ideas. Choose another selection if you are looking for which plants to choose for your garden.

If you live in the Midwest, North East or Canada (zones 1-6) this book could be considered a five star book.

This book has some of the most versatile and helpful gardening ideas I have found. I have shown it to others and they have bought copies. I am so excited about putting some of these suggestions to work in my own garden and then enjoying the results for the years to come.

I need to review have not read book. I am interested in a book that demonstrates making purses.

I purchased this book because I want to buy a Leiber bag - I was disappointed that it didn't have more bags pictured - there are so many! It wasn't so helpful in helping me find a bag I like - I still haven't purchased one!

I bought this book for my daughter who has an obsession with unique handbags. This was the perfect gift for her! Not only does it show hundreds of designs, the book tells the fascinating story of Judith Leiber and gives a glimpse into the creative mind of this world-famous craftsman
(crafts-w o m a n). The handbags she has designed are whimsical AND elegant, and are coveted by celebrities and socialites. The book is interesting, inspiring and a whole lot of FUN. I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates imagination, creativity, and uniqueness. BORING it's not!

If you have not been near a Biology syllabus in a while, this is the book for you. The authors do not assume that you know everything. The chapters cover all the major topics (the only supplementation you may need is diagrams such as those of plants). I found that the practice tests could have been better structured because the Ecology tests are separated from the Molecular tests without the common core section that's used in the actual exam. All in all, a good book - using this book alone I earned a score of 660!

This was Peter Taylor's last novel and it begins with a mystery: "In the Tennessee country of my forebears it was not uncommon for a man of good character suddenly to disappear. He might be a very young man or a middle-aged man or even sometimes a very old man. Whatever the case, few questions were ever asked. Rather, it was generally assumed that such a man had very likely felt the urging of some inner compulsion and so could not do otherwise than gather up his chattels and move on to resettle himself elsewhere."

The narrator, Nathan Longfort, first sees his older "cousin" Aubrey in 1916 on a funeral train headed from ?Washington, D.C., back to Knoxville for the burial of Longfort's grandfather, an accomplished senator. A ward of the senator, Aubrey is also the illegitimate son of a mountain woman and the senator's brother.

The novels follows Longfort's preoccupation with, and attempts to explain, Aubrey's appearances and disappearances over the years. Longfort flashes back to his parents, his schooling, and teaching career, and his own wife and son, but he always returns to Aubrey.

For the family the death of the senator represents the fading away of an era. Aubrey takes on mythic stature. To some degree, he becomes emblematic of the modern, rootless man, created in his own image, running away from the old mouth and dispensation. Without the senator, Aubrey must make his own way in the world.

The narrative reflects this sense of dissipation. "Time is nothing," Longfort quotes a Chinese philosopher and painter. "Character and experience and precious memory is all."

A retired art professor who wanted to be an artists, Longfort shuttles between past and present, attempting to buttress piecemeal discoveries against his own motives and discontents.

In this sense the story is thoroughly modern. Where the given and fixed have been abandoned, characters become increasingly self-conscious and wayward, having become mysteries to themselves. "Gone to Texas" reads a sign on one lonely homestead. That Longfort was raised without a father merely worsens the ambiguity.

At the same time, Taylor shows that the rest of the Long fort family does little better than Aubrey in sustaining a legacy of order. The manners they claim to cherish, but abuse, confine more than they provide. To them Aubrey is simply an outsider from ignoble birth and a target for easy jokes.

An unobtrusive author, Taylor develops these conflicts and tensions, often leaving the reader, like the main characters, very much on his own. Here are two lives, each falling short in some way but each eliciting sympathy. This complexity makes them more real is a measure of Taylor's talent. With its quiet prose and nudging toward sometimes discomfiting revelation, In the Tennessee Country is a solid work.

Ostensibly, this book is nothing more than a "cheap" attempt to sell a book and make a few dollars. This book is not unlike a contemporary "cut and paste" hollywood movie. There is nothing in this book that we haven't heard before. Much rhetoric, not a whole lot of RELEVANCE! When will we learn that we only hurt each other by portraying ourselves as victims on every occasion possible. I certainly question the motives of this book. I know many books that were and are published on the topic of antisemitism to make a quick buck. This degrades semites. I will say more, THIS IS ANTISEMITISM at its heart. Why? It is hurting jews, those of nationality and of faith. There are in fact many books, even in this catalogue, that are of questionable merit and relevance to actual antisemitism and of actual artistic merit. I have recently reviewed The Hitler's Pope by Cornwell on Amazon, there is another book as you can see from my review of it which has been written in the prime interest of making money. I must warn, however, that the implications of such literature do not merely end on the fact that the author receives a "Big Chek" from the happy publisher and fame in the media. In fact, what such books accomplish is real antisemitism because it its implications fall directly on Jews. Jews are not alone in the world and as such they must live together with people of other faiths and nationalities on this planet. Therefore, some authors' greedy intentions actually hurt Jews' relationships with other people. We have seen in the twentieth century what happens when peoples relationships breakdown. When I say that Cornwell's book or this book is the real antisemitic literature, I MEAN IT! This what I mean by the "latka in the face" -- such books are nothing but a cold slap in the face.

It's certainly true that this book will not increase interfaith rapport between Christianity and Judaism. It explores the very pagan roots of modern Christianity, its parallels with the ubiquitous dying/ressurrecting god-king parables of ancient Gentile (pagan) peoples. Since Biblical times, the Jews strove to keep their religion pure, whereas Christianity coopted the symbolism, rituals, deities, and beliefs of the peoples it sought to convert. Although this is hardly revelation to anyone knowledgeable of theological history, Christian readers will be alienated by the accusatory comparison of their faith to heathenism. Nor will Pagan readers find eddification; in the view of "Monsters and Madonnas", their faith equates with demonism. However, the book exposes much of the hypocrisy of the modern rightwing Christian-supremicist movement which vilifies and seeks to politically suppress polytheistic faiths. The author presents her evidence and conclusions without sympathy or sugarcoating, and the result is certainly not very palatable. But that does not lessen the book's worthiness.