Snow Falling on Water

New and Selected Poems

Richard Taylor

Accents Publishing is honored to bring to you the latest poetry book by the beloved Kentucky poet, writer and teacher Richard Taylor. In this new and selected collection, we can read poems spanning nearly five decades and hear the strong and memorable voice of the author.

What Others Say About Snow Falling on Water

Any poet who assembles a Selected Poems is saying, "This is the best I've been able to give you." And behind this statement stands the hope of endurance, of permanence on the shelves and in the lives of readers. What keeps us tuned in to Richard Taylor's poems? As Michael Moran says in his smart and insightful Introduction, "Taylor's intense attention and his rendering of that attention into unexpected images and metaphors can startle us and help us see the world differently." Taylor's interplay of image and sound shows us how lovingly deep language can strike. His poems matter.

—Jeff Worley, 2019-2020 Kentucky Poet Laureate

Snow Falling on Water is an excellent introduction to Richard Taylor's poems. He writes with deep acumen and great humility about the mysteries of the world, both outer and inner, past and present. A recurrent image in his poems is that of new fallen snow which is then tracked across, leaving us with footprints, an image which becomes a blank page the writer fills with words. Taylor's tracks, his words, are a great blessing and lead us to the possibility of a previously unimagined communion with the world.

—Michael Moran

Snow Falling on Water, the title of Richard Taylor's new and selected poems, gives us an image of natural beauty and transience. It invites us to imagine a moment of ongoing change, of transformation, and it engages the senses, the feelings, the mind as it begins to sketch a scene and cast a spell. I love the title, and I already admire the author. Richard Taylor is a master of sketching scenes and casting spells, a poet with the ability to see clearly and deeply into nature, and this includes human nature, and to share what he finds there. If, as Jane Hirshfield has said, "the poet's work is the clarification and magnification of being," Richard Taylor's poems in Snow Falling on Water present the good work of a lifetime of clear and thoughtful seeing and speaking, a trustworthy and enriching voice and vision.

—Greg Pape, author of Four Swans, Animal Time, & American Flamingo

Christmas Morning

The unfamiliar window looks out on woods—
dingy, furred, broken by little spits of light.
The first motion I make out
is an enormous buck, his rack
floating in a corona of limbs.
He moves with serenity and assurance,
with the subtlety of water soaking into cloth.
He knows without contrivance or thought
that this place belongs to him,
he to it. No tracks appear
in the dusty skim of snow.
He probes the frigid air in revery
as if shaping winter into words.
He's composing a poem, I tell myself.
No, I correct.
He is the poem.

Details and Ordering

Publication Date: September 15, 2022
Format: Softcover, 6" x 9"
ISBN: 978-1-936628-95-7
Price: $20.00

About the Author

Richard Taylor is the author of numerous collections of poetry, two historical novels, and several books relating to Kentucky history, including Elkhorn: Evolution of a Kentucky Landmark. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he has received two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as an Al Smith Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. Educated at the University of Kentucky (bachelors and Ph.D. in English), he also holds a masters degree (English) and a J.D. from the University of Louisville. Practicing law for a few months, he gave up legal practice, a leave-taking he regards as his gift to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. During graduate school he taught in high schools across Kentucky with the Poetry-in-the-Schools Program through the Kentucky Arts Council, editing an anthology of student writing called Cloud Bumping. Embarking on a career in education, he taught at Kentucky State University in Frankfort until retiring in 2008. During that time he taught in the Governor's School for the Arts as well as serving as director of the Governor's Scholars Program on two campuses. He also spent a year in Denmark as a scholar-teacher in the Fulbright Program, also teaching a graduate course at Kangwon University in Korea as well as short periods teaching abroad in England and Ireland in a studies-abroad program. He has received publication awards from the Kentucky Historical Society and the Thomas C. Clark Medallion for his Elkhorn book as well as receiving a Distinguished Professor Award at KSU. Recently retired after fourteen years from Transylvania University as Keenan Visiting Writer, he is co-owner of Poor Richard's Books and lives on a small farm outside Frankfort, Kentucky.

Photo from Transylvania University