Interview with Anique Sara Taylor, Author of Civil Twilight

Anique Sara Taylor’s book Civil Twilight is Blue Light Poetry Prize 2022. Where Space Bends was published by Finishing Line Press 2020. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her chapbooks chosen Finalist in 2023 are: When Black Opalescent Birds Still Circled the Globe (Harbor Review’s Inaugural 2023 Jewish Women’s Prize); Feathered Strips of Prayer Before Morning (Minerva Rising); Cobblestone Mist (Long-listed Finalist by Harbor Editions’ Marginalia Series). Earlier Chapbook Finalists: Where Space Bends (In earlier chapbook form 2014 by both Minerva Rising & Blue Light Press.) and Under the Ice Moon (2015 Blue Light Press). She holds a Poetry MFA (Drew), Diplôme (Sorbonne, Paris), a Drawing MFA & Painting BFA (With Highest Honors / Pratt) and a Master of Divinity degree. Follow her on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and her blog. Sign up for her newsletter.

Where did you grow up? 

You’d think that would be a simple question, but it opens into what could be a generational novel, or a commentary on social history in America. Here’s the very short version: Connecticut.           

The real answer. I grew up in a town in Connecticut that had something called a “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” There’s a 1947 Gregory Peck movie about it. It’s a real estate agreement to prevent Jews from buying property or living in town.           

My grandparents had moved there from the Lower East Side, New York City in the early 1900s. Both Yiddish speaking from Russia, they’d moved to the town before the town was restricted. They ran the general store. 

Throughout my school years, I tended to be the only Jewish kid in my class and grade. Although I was never afraid of being beaten up, never ashamed, and always proud of my heritage, from an early age I was aware of being different, set apart from the others. This caused an experience of seeing the world on simultaneous layers with a slight feeling of dissonance. 

What does this have to do with poetry? In short, I was an outsider. Whether one is an outsider by history, parentage, experience, or character, it forces us to question accepted perceptions. We continually experience what the majority takes for granted, along with other layers only we are aware of. It is often a creative’s personal launch into becoming a poet. This questioning, this split vision is a gift to a poet. It has been for me a precious learning I wouldn’t trade. 

When did you begin writing?           

Writing was an important part of my life from a very early age. But writing, as a writer developed in different waves of becoming over the years.           

When I was a toddler, my Grandma played 78’s from decades long past. I loved and memorized lyrics to early pop music. I memorized poems from poetry books that were read to me. I started writing journals to myself in my head before I learned how to write. 

From school writing assignments, I still have my first two books written in the first grade. One is called The Story of the Witch-Ghost. In fourth grade I remember writing a poem where every stanza finished with “A woman’s work is never done.” I wrote reflections and vignettes, first in notebooks, then with typewriter through junior high and high school, and a book in letter form to my parents my first semester away from home. 

My writing continued to weave through NYC years where I collaborated with writer friends. I participated in readings throughout the East Village. I was active in St. Mark’s Poetry Project and studied in year-long courses with Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer.           

My personal writing distilled into a deeper commitment later when I took a night school class at Sarah Lawrence. My teacher there introduced me to Drew University’s Masters in Poetry program. The force of the program’s required study/writing/reading deepened me in ways I’d always hoped for but couldn’t find on my own. Its community of exquisite poets and poetic thought tunneled me into a passion I’d always searched for. 

Though it was after graduation and later, that commitment to my Morning Practice, brought growing change and fulfillment. 

Why did you choose short form poems? 

Although very long lines were characteristic of my inner voice, I was also experimenting with merging short phrases from scientific research and personal experience. 

When entangling life situations necessitated knowledge of many details, people, steps that I had to keep track of, I feared issues would always crop up to interrupt my progress in exploring and finishing creative work. I knew I needed something. Even though I was a night owl, I set out to experiment with a plan. I’d wake up at 5am and write for three uninterrupted hours, before offices opened and I had to deal with business details. 

This dark-morning dreamtime work enabled me to spend longer times with a poem, so I could try to bring it to the best level I could. I followed sparks of interest. I experimented. Possibilities began to form from many directions, as did simultaneous projects. I began to envision how scattered work could connect into groupings. One became my first book, Where Space Bends. In long form poems, it follows a year of aging in an enchanting mountain village, while dealing with symptoms of long-term Lyme Disease. 

While working on longer poems, I was researching a variety of subjects that sparked my interest. I explored information on the nature of galaxies, spirochetes, Jewish holidays, Tarot, biology, geology and seasons, plus the history of Lyme Disease. Within this exploration, I began to notice nuggets of fascination, exciting diction, something alive at the bud within short phrases. 

I continued to compose short poetic phrases that sometimes rang strange, sometimes metaphoric, as their outer universe echoed my inner universe. These collections grew. They filled computer folders over a few years. As I began to feel the need for culmination, I think the form chose me. A short form chapbook.

 

What inspired you to write it?             

The continual need to create is at the center of almost all of my work. As I worked in the ways I described, two feelings converged. One, the outer business requirements felt like they were pulling me away from my necessary center. I felt I was losing myself. Two, semi-finished work was piling up. I questioned whether I could use my experimental pieces to deepen into a finished whole.           

Despite the life pull of family, health, business, houses or things that separate me from a place and time aside, a dream-time quality was necessary for me to write. And I needed a project to carry me through. 

I needed to experiment with something new, even though I didn’t know if it would work. With that I set a project goal with real-life deadlines. A chapbook. A thirty-page book. I turned to my folders of metaphorical phrases, short lines and personal work. 

While researching I’d been working on a non-fiction book. I discovered civil twilight was a specific time designation. It was also the time of day my father had died swimming in the Caribbean. Combining several numerical landmarks of people in my life, my father’s death and the poetic time of day, I created the form. Thirty poems, thirty words, five lines each, with my father’s ghost weaving through the book, also as a metaphor for other losses in my life. 

I’d never attempted a short-form project before. I hoped the challenge would carry me through a complicated time, without knowing if I could create within it work that would satisfy the poetic elements I desired. 

Was it possible for me to work within so tight a form? Within the thirty words, I wanted imagistic nouns and metaphors that could push both meaning and abstraction. I wanted surprise within a dream quality, assonance and alliteration that could push poetic diction. I wanted the rhythm of the long line. 

What is this book about?           

Though meaning can be the moving force of a poem, poetry is often about the use of language to find ways to create surprise and delight. To create bright strands of diction that stand on their own apart from meaning, with words as our palette. 

In this book even with the challenge of cutting extraneous words, I was courting the sprawl of the long line. The use of strong images to create metaphors that could juxtapose the surreal and dream-like to the concrete. Metaphors to crystalize illusive emotions into musicality within the short phrase. 

I wanted to delve into emotions dealing with caution, risk, the ephemeral nature of our lives, but also the sharp edge of beauty. Some themes that lace through are mountains, rivers, wildlife, grief, loss, celebration, the fleeting nature of outer seasons juxtaposed to our inner seasons, the macrocosm and the microcosm, finding our own path, what haunts us, and what we continue to haunt. 

How is it similar to other books in its genre? How is it different?           

There are many short forms of poetry. Haiku. Tanka, Cinquain, Triolet, Sijo are some of the smallest. Monostiches are a forcefully poetic one line that has the scope of a full poem. Along with slightly longer poems like the sonnet or the villanelle, there are hundreds of classical forms. And there are more recent forms, along with countless forms being invented by poets even as you’re reading this. 

Micro-poetry is being created to work within the various constraints of different social media platforms. It’s often accompanied by wonderful new and older acronyms, OMG like FOMO, GIF, PIN, and every sort of new invented word. 

Many forms count syllables. Many call for strict meter, rhythm, or line repetition patterns. A form often contains a puzzle which can soften the process when writing about painful subjects. The music of rhyme and repetition uses sound to enhance the magic. There is so much beautiful work that’s been done in form. If you search for lists of forms or by individual name, you will find endless poems and books with examples. 

But. There is danger in writing in forms, especially in early stages of developing as a writer. Adhering to syllable counts, rhythms and especially end rhymes, often forces a writer to sacrifice imagery, metaphor, irony, paradox or other meaningfully deepening tools in order to serve the beat or the end rhyme. 

Civil Twilight’s five-line, thirty-word quintains were my own personal challenge. But I vowed I would not pursue it if I felt the form hindered the magic, instead of deepening it. 

What is the most important thing readers can learn from your book? 

There is always something below the surface. There is something complicated within the simple. Music in grief, life can unfold in ways we never expected. Even though we may be surprised to learn that control is an illusion, it is important to keep moving forward. To tend what we love. To sense exquisiteness within all that is around us. To know ephemeral magic is always unfolding. 

Where can readers purchase a copy?

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

For a signed copy, please visit the contact page of my website. Include your name, snail mail address, and PayPal email. I will send a $15. request, then mail you a copy. 

What is up next for you? 

My daily Morning Practice is always at the core of my work. As a creative person, it keeps me connected to the center. I’ve finished (again) Feathered Strips of Prayer Before Morning, which has been chosen Finalist by Minerva Rising and Harbor Review Press, in different early forms. A chapbook of thirty pages, each poem is a prose poem and has seventy-seven words. 

Although it is a finished piece, I’m planning to use some of it toward a full-length book that incorporates other sections in different, individual forms. After having just finished the chapbook, I’m working on individual poems that are much longer and don’t have specific forms. 

Cobblestone Mist, a finished full-length book, is being sent out to look for a home. Its poems center around a poet and children’s performer on NYC’s Lower East Side in the 1980s, who is trying to find her way and her creative center amidst frightening symptoms of an invisible chronic illness.  

I’m very involved with events. I’m hoping to perform a piece on bears and living in the mountains, for March Monologue Madness. I’ll be appearing with a wonderful group at The Poetry Barn for a performance from a workshop on From Page to Stage. Community is so important.

I’m preparing to have teaching-point essays to send out from my Newsletter. All of these will be listed on my website and in newsletters and social media. Those interested can sign up at my website, AniqueSaraTaylor.com 

Is there anything you would like to add? 

Though we need to be individualists who follow our own path for our creative process, learning from others is also powerful. It is important to always continue learning from books, classes, workshops, and community groups.  

I consider self-care a necessary part of being in the best place to work on my writing. Because of a history of chronic illness, I became a life coach specializing in creativity and natural health. For creatives in this society, it is important to learn what is necessary for us to be in what I call the Good Zone. Whatever is in our lives, something always seems to come up to pull us away from our work, therefore the concept of being “in training” for the Good Zone has been a huge support for me. 

For me self-care involves a clean, high-nutrition diet, exercise, QiGong, Yoga, meditation and a community of creative friends, which are all at the core of maintaining a place in the Good Zone. This is where I create the best. I find that health inspires inspiration, and inspiration inspires health. 

For me, these are all a part of the brocade of a creative practice.

Take heart. Sometimes it requires persistence, resilience and faith. 

Follow what you love.

Purpose is a tonic.