Thank you Nathan Hauke for giving Heifer a shout out in The Drunken Boat

Go here to read what all Nathan Hauke is reading...THE DRUNKEN BOAT

Shelly Taylor’s Black-Eyed Heifer (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2010)

I water the dirt for the weeds to grow, lo

(“She said this is mine, pine street”).

This is a great book! Have you read it? Black-Eyed Heifer is tough, plainspoken, loose (talky), and stridently exuberant, full of startling grace and presence. Deeply committed to the destabilizing intensities of Taylor’s respective environment(s), Black-Eyed Heifer calls us to  “adorn [ourselves] with movement” by acknowledging the innate wildness of becoming: “as in morning shed a blue coat I wore all day” (“This sonofabitch land had to be broken”). There is real urgency to its music(s) and a drive to embrace each shift of attention as long as it lasts: “One minute you are a person, the next you’re a bird shadow over the concrete: a wide action given width, post-tree top harmony” (“Money for the horse”).