Poet david taylor biography

My Second Poem

I wrote about a high school girl
who had a father with angry fists
and a mother who liked pills.

One night she kissed me
in a high school parking lot at dusk
while I fumbled with the panties
held tightly against her virginity.

She was white. I wasn’t.

And I knew how this would end.

I knew before the sun had set,
before I said hello to her in the hallways,
or dreamt about her at night.

I knew before I was even born
that her father would come to yell
at his white daughter for being
with someone like me.

That his fists would be sledgehammers
against my thin frame,
that my body would break
under the weight of his boots.

I knew the whiteness of his rage,
that she would want to do something
other than cry.

But as I read over my poem,
past the mixed metaphors and uncontrolled syntax,
past the taste of blood and dirt and hate,
I remembered that I think I loved her.

Black Man Poetry

I used to write black man poems
about being black and a man.
But my words were discarded
in digital trashcans by white editors
wanting more—
a reason to demonstrate they understood
injustice and poverty,
food stamps and a dream deferred.

So I wrote about dreadlocks and marijuana,
stories about drunken fists shattering
my twelve-year-old bones
by my father who struggled
against the shackles of history,
the rage of being less than.

I said my brother was high,
got shot for being black
while walking across the street
to our barren apartment.

But then that didn’t matter&#;
I was simply a black man writing
black man poetry.

Luckily Ferguson became hip
and white people paid better
when I talked about how black lives matter,
commercialized history chained
black men to textbooks,
whitewashed oppression and apartheid.

And I wrote about black fists penetrating
swollen skies and teargas raped
broken neighborhoods
while school children hid under
their beds until morning came.

But I finally ran out of

American author and filmmaker

David A. Taylor (born ) is an American author and filmmaker on topics in history and science.

Taylor's books include Ginseng, the Divine Root (Algonquin) and Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America (Wiley), which the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ranked among the Best Books of

Taylor has written articles for The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Science, Microbe, National Geographic, and Washingtonian. He has written scripts for National Geographic Channel, PBS, Discovery and Smithsonian Channels.

Biography

Taylor's first book, Ginseng, the Divine Root, was published by Algonquin Books in June The Boston Globe called it "fantastic" and "one of those rare works that remind us what an endlessly surprising place the world is by revealing the drama concentrated in the past and present of one plant."Library Journal dubbed it "a fascinating tour" from "a master storyteller," and Publishers Weekly called it "an intelligent, wide-ranging account."

Taylor's second nonfiction book, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America, published by Wiley & Sons in February , was named an Amazon Book of the Month and a finalist in the Library of Virginia Literary Awards. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ranked the book among the Best Books of According to Southern Cultures, the book introduces "some of the most important American writers" of that period and shows "how these writers shaped the way Americans tell their histories." NPR featured the book on All Things Considered. In the Washington Independent Review of Books Cathy Alter wrote, "Taylor has a knack for taking unsung heroes and elevating them to star status," adding that Soul of a People was "a humane and seminal accounting of our country, not unlike Studs Terkel's Working."

Publishers W