Customer Reviews

The Last Time As We Are HC

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The Last Time as We Are is the only book I've ever finished, then turned back and read straight through again.

The book is laid out in three parts, starting with "Lifework." In this section, the everyday and ordinary things in life (sweeping up, the moon, three legged dogs, childhood rituals) become sacred again. Mali has a way of quietly taking something you've seen every day of your life and turning it just so, making it altogether new again. It's the poems from this section that I find myself thinking about in quiet moments when I think I've let everything go.

The second part, "Classwork," contains poems about lessons learned as viewed through the lens of the classroom. I found myself very inspired by this section and developed some great lesson plans because of it. My students are better writers now because of this book (which, as a teacher, is all the endorsement anything should ever need). If you are not a teacher though, you will still love these poems; they move through the book, passionate, amusing, endearing, and sincere. The poems about boys in particular, are written with equal parts tenderness, disgust and humor, which is basically what teenage boys are.

Finally, "Homework" ends the collection with poems about love, relationships and why king sized beds are essential. These poems are as much about distance as they are about being together, and I found them to be the saddest in the book although they are not overtly so. What has stayed with me from this section are the three final lines from "Love Hungry for Itself," "Leave me this great imperfect love/ in which the body knows to seek/ what the heart does not think it needs."

Taylor Mali has often quoted the poet Horace, saying that the purpose of poetry is to instruct and entertain. The entertainment value in Mali's work is often very easy to find, but the real value of this book is in the instruction. Yes, the poetry is beautiful, haunting, mournful, stunning, hilarious, but if it were only that, the impact it had on me would have been much less. Teachers often talk about the "teachable moment;" that perfect moment where a student is in just the right place to truly take in a piece of information, or a concept, or skill. In reading this book, I found myself on the student side of that equation time after time, and that spark, that rush of wonder and understanding, is where this book separates itself from others.

Taylor Mali has long been one of my favorite poets because he never apologizes for his overwhelming desire to be the best at everything he does. Often described as the "villain" of the slam community, Mali has an attention to detail and craft that is unmatched by most performance poets. I was so excited to see this collection on the Write Bloody Publishing site that I ordered a hardback copy before it was even released. The first time I read it, it took a day. Since then, I've read it at least a dozen times because I always discover nuances and one or two clever turns of phrase that had previously escaped my attention.

Mali is an ideal poet to share with any educator, as he writes about teaching with the same love and patience that teachers master in the classroom. His poems are almost always appropriate for teenagers, who love his sarcasm and wit, and several are even fun to read aloud with younger kids. The best part is, Mali shows incredible growth in this collection. While always a stalwart in competition, Mali was not content for his poems to merely exist on the page. He wanted them to belong there. Well, they do more than just belong - they resound from the bookcase, begging to be read again. Simply fantastic.

So wonderful to have more Taylor Mali poems to read. We share them together out loud. Some are funny, some are poignant -- all are amazing.