Understanding Fiction: Poems, 1986-1996

The strongest of the poems in this collection exhibit the graceful clarity and perception that marked Henry Taylor's previous three books, notably The Flying Change, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986. At his best, Taylor deftly illuminates some subtle nobility or rare but overlooked quality in the quotidian ticking of his days. In ""Underpass,"" a refreshing and oddly surprising love poem, the narrator reminds his longtime spouse of a fleeting and seemingly inconsequential moment from their sweetly optimistic youth. ""After a Movie"" evokes that moment of leaving a theater, when patrons ""dwindle through the lobby"" or when, heading home, a cab passenger's ""profile cruises past the city."" Other poems, regrettably, remind the reader of Gertrude Stein's stinging observation that ""remarks are not literature."" Examples are the wincingly miraculous rescue of a baking dish in ""Another Postponement of Destruction"" and ""Centennial,"" which teeters on the brink of bromide. The strength of Taylor's conversational style is its capacity to transform banality. The weakness, however, is that sometimes it simply overexposes it. (Oct.)