Issue #20 of The Hook; published 06/20/02

BY MARIFLO STEPHENS

I'm mother.

I hunt alone.

There is no bone

Too dry for me, mother,

Or too extra. --from "Woman As Artist" by Eleanor Ross Taylor

The first time I met Eleanor and Peter Taylor in 1983, neither knew I had recently been accepted into the creative writing program at the University. They knew only that I'd recently had a baby.

"I'm glad it's a girl," Peter said. "I don't know why people want boys. Ross cried and cried. Kate sat in her crib and cooed."

When they did find out I was trying to write fiction, Eleanor asked that I send her a story, saying that she and Peter read to each other. I did, thrilled with the idea of the master of the short story reading mine. She replied with a note: "I like the way you form your sentences."

More to the point, critics like the way Eleanor Ross Taylor forms her poems.

The same year that saw the most recent book about Peter's life saw the publication of an amazing volume about Eleanor's work.

The Lighthouse Keeper, published by Hobart and William Smith Colleges Press, is an 18-critic homage. In no uncertain terms, Joyce Peseroff calls Eleanor Taylor "essential."

"Her language is like no one else's," writes Fred Chappell.

George Garrett says she's a "national treasure."

As a worthy successor to Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore, Eleanor Taylor lives an appropriately quiet life on Wayside Place in Charlottesville. But there's nothing quiet about her mind.

As I continued to be a fan of Peter's stories, my appreciation for the poetry of Eleanor Ross Taylor grew immeasurably. I would, in fact, hold the writer Jane Barnes hostage at my dining room table to explain the poem "Welcome Eumenides."

By the time I had my second daughter, Peter and Eleanor had become guests at my home and vice versa. Once when some writer remarked that with two small children, I must not have much time for writing, Eleanor hotly jumped to my defense.

"What's she supposed to do? Not have children?"

When there are two people in a marriage who write, competition, or something like it, sometimes raises its head. Although Eleanor has never seemed to want any kind of attention-- and even seemed embarrassed the one time I asked her to sign a book-- poetic justice certainly rules with the publication of The Lighthouse Keeper.

Fellow poet Randall Jarrell is among the celebrants: "The poems are full of personal force, personal truth-- the first and last thing a reader sees in a writer-- down to the last piece of wording."

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