Poet and bookstore owner Richard Taylor long ago left his lawyer days behind him, but his law-school training may deserve some of the credit for the observational skills and attention to detail and nuance that are evident in his writing. The poems in Earth Bones, published not long after Taylor and his wife moved to rural Franklin County to live closer to the land, find whole worlds of wonder in the ordinary actions of insects, cows, birds, and fish and ponder what becomes of the life force of a tree turned into furniture or felled in the name of development. Subtle and meticulously crafted, they invite the reader to look more closely—to consider nature, human nature, and the sometimes benevolent but often destructive interactions between them.

Watch the program [requires RealPlayer®].

Transcript of bookclub@ket discussion

Card catalog entry from the Library of Congress

Blurb from the book jacket

Publisher: Gnomon Press, P.O. Box 475, Frankfort, KY 40602-0475

Amazon.com information page

Barnes and Noble information page

     Travel begins
     where the traffic stops.

Richard Taylor
1941-

Video interview with bookclub host Bill Goodman, taped 4/2/03 [requires RealPlayer®].

Biography and list of works

Profile from Ace magazine, January 1999

Video extra: A visit with Richard Taylor, from Program 615 of KET’s Kentucky Life, was taped during Richard’s term as Kentucky Poet Laureate, 1999-2000 [requires RealPlayer®].

Richard and his wife, Lizz, own and operate Poor Richard’s Books.

Brief biography from the description of a traveling exhibit of bindings of Stone Eye, a 2002 fine edition by Larkspur Press of Richard’s poems accompanied by wood engravings by Wesley Bates [More about the exhibit]

Gov. Patton inducts Taylor as Poet Laureate (press release from 1999)

Kentucky’s Poets Laureate

The Kentucky Humanities Council’s New Books for New Readers series includes Richard Taylor’s Three Kentucky Tragedies.