Introduction to The Straw Market, Henry Taylor

Henry Taylor was a member of the original cast of William Jay Smith’s The Straw Market . He is Professor Emeritus at American University in Washington, DC, where he taught from 1971-2003. His third collection of poems, The Flying Change , received the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; his first two, The Horse Show at Midnight (1966) and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards (1975), were reissued in one volume in 1992. His latest collection, Crooked Run , was released in 2006 by Louisiana State University Press. He has translated from Bulgarian, French, Hebrew, Italian, and Russian, as well as two collections by the Bulgarian poet Vladimir Levchev, the most recent being Black Book of the Endangered Species (1999). His translation of Sophocles’ Electra appeared in spring 1998 in the Sophocles, 1 volume of the Penn Greek Drama series.