Fifteen Poems and Drafts — Blackbird Archive

← v11n1, Spring 2012

Presented here are fifteen previously unpublished poems by Eleanor Ross Taylor, who died on December 30, 2011. Accompanying the poems are scans of manuscript pages demonstrating that these pieces were undergoing revision. Blackbird literary editor Susan Settlemyre Williams incorporated the revisions into the poems as they are published here; the originals can be viewed by clicking the “manuscript” button upper right on each poem’s page.

Introducing the poems is “As a Writer, All Bets Were Off: A Eulogy for Eleanor Ross Taylor,” written by her son, Ross Taylor. This piece originally appeared, through the offices of Nin Andrews, as a guest post on the blog, The Best American Poetry.

In addition to the Fifteen Poems and Drafts suite, appearing in Features is an audio recording of “In Celebration of Eleanor Ross Taylor,” a panel tribute to the poet from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Annual Conference in Chicago on March 2, 2012. Catherine Barnett organized the tribute with speakers Jean Valentine, Ed Skoog, Kevin Prufer, and David Wojahn.

memory grief

Eleanor Ross Taylor

Eleanor Ross Taylor (1920–2011) was the author of six volumes of poems: Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems 1960–2008 (Louisiana State University Press, 2009), which won the 2010 William Carlos Williams Award; Late Leisure (Louisiana State University Press, 1999), which won the 2000 Library of Virginia Literary Award in poetry; Days Going/Days Coming Back (University of Utah Press, 1992); New and Selected Poems (Stuart Wright, 1983); Welcome Eumenides (George Braziller, 1972); and Wilderness of Ladies (McDowell, 1960). Her awards included a 1968 fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 1998 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the 2001 Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, the 2009 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry, and the 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In 2009 she was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Photo by David A. Peterson