Customer Reviews

The Apprentice of Fever: Poems (Wick Poetry First Book Series)

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Richard Tayson, The Apprentice of Fever (Kent State University Press, 1998)

I've had Richard Tayson's The Apprentice of Fever on my list of stuff to read for so long, I'd forgotten why I originally put it there. When I found out how difficult it was going to be to get from the library (even back when my system subscribed to Interlibrary Loan, which it no longer does), it slid down the priority queue a ways, but it stayed in the back of my mind. So when I stumbled across a copy at Half Price Books a few weeks ago, I snapped it up, and remembered why I'd put it on the list: it's Kent State, whose Wick chapbook series have been a mainstay of what's good in poetry for over a decade. At the time I discovered this, though, I had not yet encountered its sister series, the Wick First Book Poetry Prize. This will be the fourth or fifth Wick First Book Prize book I've read, and it adds fuel to my rule of thumb that while it's hard to go wrong picking up a random Wick chapbook, it's hard to go right with the First Books.

Tayson is a solid, if unremarkable, poet who can put together some fantastic images and give them excellent supporting lines. Not on a consistent basis, but enough to make a reader sit up and take notice. There are some nice shifts in tone here and there, a couple of places where Tayson will switch rhythms in mid-stride, but not in an inept way, but a planned one; this is, in general, well-crafted work with enough artistry (given that there is a distinction between "art" and "craft", a subject which has oddly been in debate for a few decades when it comes to poetry) to make it worth reading:

"I get out of bed, watch you
chuck eggs from the window, spill
milk over the sill, toss
tonight's spareribs down the laundry
chute and the steam of your yannoh
rises. You cram king-size
garbage bags with cheeze
spread, Hungry Man
TV dinners, go for the box
of cannolis..."
("New Food")

It's not bad, but with a very few exceptions (as the above), the book is single-minded; poem after poem stocked with related, and sometimes identical, imagery. It gets tiresome pretty quick, no matter how well-constructed it may be. And so I end up letting it drop on the wrong side of just-about-average. **

I picked this book up as a last minute resort for a poetry course's final project. The assignment was to choose a contemporary poet and do a "book report". I went downtown and after some minor hunting, I encountered for the first time Richard Tayson. I picked the book up and figured that I might be able to at least tackle the begining during the hour long train ride home. Not only was I able to read the entire book, but I was surprisingly saddened by the shortness of the piece. This secret-telling, intimate and vulnerable work was able to take me right into Tayson's visions. Most pleasing is how Tayson was not afraid to use every tool of description possible. By the time I stepped off of the train, I knew that my money was very well spent. What a pleasure to be able to know such a thing before even getting back home!

The poems focus on gay life and death in the age of AIDS. The writing is clear and detailed, the imagery eloquent, and the emotions upfront. A very powerful experience.

Tayson's autobiographical tone and imagery make you feel like you are the one experiencing the dying lover, discovering sexual pleasures, uttering the unsayable. I was deeply moved by this book and pleased that so many truths were pronounced.

I picked this book up one morning with the intention of leafing through it and maybe reading a few of the poems and coming back to it another day. Instead, I picked it up and never put it down until I had read every last word. It took me the rest of the day to absorb and process all the emotions I experienced while reading this beautiful book.