To Let the Sun

Finalist, 2025 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

John 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.

Author: John Allen Taylor
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: 03/03/2025
Series: Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Pages: 84
Weight: 0.27lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.20d
ISBN: 9781682262719