And the Weary Are at Rest by Andrew Taylor

Reviewed by Erin McKnight

ISBN 978-1-934513-05-7
Sunnyoutside Press, 2008

In Andrew Taylor’s And the Weary Are at Rest, the continuum of life is not as much interrupted by symbols of ephemerality as it is adjoined to them; life and death coalesce in an unmistakable sense of familiarity that extends to readers an invitation to explore and perambulate within the shared bounds of human mortality.

Traversing Taylor’s gently rolling terrain, a “rook [sits] on a chimney stack” until a swallow barrels into its space, the “peaceful gaze” of the resting bird “shattered” by the assailing swallow. And when the “fighter plane attack” is over and the sky once again expansive and tall, the rook merely shifts and readers are again free to resume their roaming.

The impact of death crashes over and again into the field of consideration, and is a constant theme throughout Taylor’s 21 poems. In order for the beginning to meet the end—or the end to, itself, become a new beginning—motion must occur. Transition forms the sound of life, its sonal movement sustaining the sensory element best captured in Taylor’s calmly startling prose:

The air cools
distantly I hear
the hum of motorway

However, in “This Time of Night,” a distinct knowing settles on readers’ shoulders much like the moss-covered rock they might have just tripped over, but did not see. Life moves, death waits. The only occasions that allow a person to slow down enough to recognize death’s dark presence are those that possess the danger of snatching away one’s kinetic being. Signs of dissolution are everywhere:

closer
a blackbird stakes
its claim
song
fills the void

And when mortality does meet itself in Taylor’s writing it occurs within a collection that is sensibly English—one of “rose-scented dreams.” Yet, the “smell of roadkill masked by trepidation” permeates Taylor’s “Wish the World Away,” and the effects of readers’ explorations—or deathly reconnaissance mission—are felt in a way that transcend any detached sense of investigation:

Suburban commuter train 7.55
sudden thrash amidst the calm
blackbird flies crashes into closed doors
lays there stunned and frozen
beak opens weakly

Death arrives to disturb the quiet peace sustained by the motion of the train filled with people that behave in accord with the act of living—on their way into jobs and lives—solid reasons for the expectations generally carried about as burdens.

Suburban commuter train 17.15
mass flight from overcrowded
carriages I bide my time stopping
shyly to peek behind the wall there
the bird lays still blood spattered on its beak

After the day’s events are over and workers come home to settle, to roost, the sound of the bird becomes the silence of purpose in motion:

The hope that had been building
all day finally comes down to
the sound of flapping wings as oblivious
blackbirds call

The weary are at rest.

Erin McKnight is a Scottish writer now living in Dallas, and is Fiction Editor for Prick of the Spindle. Her writing has been widely published online and in print, in venues including flashquake, Ginosko Literary Journal, and PRECIPICe. Her short nonfiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and inclusion in W.W. Norton’s The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3. Erin holds an MFA in creative writing with a specialization in fiction, and is currently at work on an MA in literary linguistics.

© 2008 prickofthespindle.com