Taylor Mali

Rare have I been fortunate to fall for REALLY contemporary poets, but now I am head over heels. Taylor Mali is a teacher poet whose chapbook What Learning Leaves totally inspires me. (In the first of those two links click on the audio poems and then click on "What Teachers Make." An almost embarassingly satisfying piece. This guy besides being a teacher and writer is apparently "...the only person to have won the national poetry slam championship three times."

Tonight I'm thinking about this poem:

More Than Sleep

          the body craves
the act of falling into sleep.
the falling takes us farther
than the fall.

I cannot write a love poem
without feeling love, like sleep,
is at last an act of falling,
a putting out of hands
and hoping
never to feel again
that solid
ground.




I'm thinking of it because as tired as I am, I don't want to go to bed tonight. Don't want to give up today only to wake into tomorrow.

But as for love...

One more poem tonight.
My favorite of his so far is Undivided Attention.