This, for him, is essential. In an age that tends to isolate people from one another, the need to seek understanding becomes urgent. Tayson believes poetry helps in this quest, working against shortsightedness. “For me, the whole reason why poetry exists is to really connect with other people in the community,” he said.
“The World Underneath” opens with a quote from the poem “Islands,” by the late poet Muriel Rukeyser: “O for God’s sake/ they are connected/ underneath…” Tayson takes connection as a theme, drawing together seemingly separate events and concepts. In several of the poems, he describes being present when his sister-in-law gives birth to a baby at the home she shares with his brother in California. In others, he explores his own day-to-day life within a same-sex relationship. The poem “Arrival” contemplates the vast stretch of land that holds these two lives together:
“…O Texas, O Tennessee
sweet Georgia with your one-to-twenty
years felony, I flew over canyons
and fruited plains, my crimes
against nature carefully concealed…”
The book also explores the idea of environmental crisis, and in the title poem Tayson ties this into his relationships with his family members:
“The panic attacks began
the summer my mother’s gold watch
was stolen from my apartment
above the expressway. The air
so hot it was hard
to sleep, to breathe, to count
cloned sheep or sing
love songs from the time
before we learned to fear
sun, water, fruit…”
With their personal-political subject matter and accessible voice, the poems have a remarkably frank and revelatory quality. Writing in this intimate way creates moments of recognition, he hopes. “Not that when I feel love, however I’m defining that, it’s the same as what you feel,” he explained, “but we have common ground on seeking communion with somebody. Personal poetry, pushed far enough, becomes universal.”
Tayson discovered his love of writing during a stint of European travel as a college student. In 1990, he enrolled in a master’s degree program at NYU and was eager to apprentice himself to the poets teaching there. He arrived on the Lower East Side short on money and a little intimidated by the chaos of the metropolis. “I could not deal with Alphabet City … it was so different from everything I was used to,” he said.
Tayson moved first to Brooklyn, then settled in Queens. In 1998 he published two books — his first collection of poetry, “The Apprentice of Fever,” and “Look Up for Yes,” the memoir of a chronically ill woman with whom Tayson collaborated. The latter went on to become a bestseller in Germany, and continuing royalties from it are one of many ways he makes a living. “You can’t make a living as a poet for obvious reasons,” Tayson said, “so you have to put things together for yourself.” He also writes occasional critical articles, and in 2003 he won a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. “Trying to live as a poet means trying to be versatile,” he added.
As a teacher he’s a boon to his students, colleagues said. Jean Murley, who also teaches in the QCC English Department, said his engagement in his craft encourages students of poetry. “It’s wonderful and important for students … to see that poetry isn’t some lofty and meaningless thing written by people who are just names on a page,” she said.
Author Alicia Ostriker, who taught with him at Rutgers, was struck by “his love of his students and of teaching, and above all his love of poetry — and of life.”
A decade has passed between the publication of his last book of poems and “The World Underneath.” In the interim, Tayson wrote one book he didn’t like and decided not to publish. He also finds it difficult to write intensely personal poetry without taking a break. “It’s just too much for me sometimes. I want to step back and write other things,” Right now, through a fellowship at CUNY, he is working on a dissertation about the influence of 19th-century English poet William Blake on American culture, including punk rock.
Tayson laments that modern poets are unlikely to have such a long-lasting impact, because so many of them produce esoteric work inaccessible to all but a small group of academics. “I’m trying to work against the strain of American poetry that wants to play with language rather than have some concrete subject matter,” he said.
Even if poetry is no longer at the center of pop culture, it can still resonate: “I’m really trying to write about people, and about situations that are applicable to people’s lives.” If people can relate, he suggests, poetry may in fact create change in the world.
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