Bourbon whiskey aging in oak barrels
loses about 2% of its volume per year

to evaporation—the share of the angels
whose revelries, whose excesses,

are what makes the news,
also duly noted in the Book of Storms.

-Richard Taylor,
Fading Into Bolivia (2011), Accents Publishing

To hear an interview with Richard Taylor on Accents Radio from 88.1 WRFL in Lexington, click here.

Richard Taylor is a professor of English and currently serves as Kenan Visiting Writer at Transylvania University. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he is the author of six collections of poetry, two novels, and several books of non-fiction, mostly relating to Kentucky history. A former dean and teacher in the Governor’s Scholars Program, he was selected as Distinguished Professor at Kentucky State University in 1992. He has won two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Al Smith Creative Writing Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. He and his wife Lizz own Poor Richard’s Books in Frankfort, Kentucky.