REVIEWS
"The Hunger Season pinpoints moments of realization that surface in the mundane of ordinary life. The setting, that of San Francisco, is resonant throughout the book and colors its poems with the city's personality. ... Taylor finds little moments of poignancy in what is otherwise presented as a banal existence.”
—Prick of the Spindle
"Rarely, you stumble across a book of poetry that blows your mind and you think 'This is greatness,' and you wonder why the world hasn’t heard about the author and why his books aren’t sitting in the checkout aisle of every grocery store. 'Here is a book of important truths,' you say, 'surely these words are as important as food, cigarettes and beer.' William Taylor, Jr.’s new poetry collection The Hunger Season (Sunnyoutside 2009) is one of these rare books.”
—Gutter Eloquence
"His poetry is clear, plain, stark and spare. He does not use embellishment or sparkly prose to guide us down the pathways he’s chosen. He watches with a keen eye for detail, and then reports it with the poet’s twisted interpretation.”
—Red Fez
"This collection of poems is weighty, substantial, and it sustains.”
—Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
BLURBS
“Writing the infinite in plainspoken English, William Taylor Jr.’s The Hunger Season is a vastly enjoyable volume of poems that gives the reader not only a glimpse of life in San Francisco but into themselves as well. William Taylor Jr. wonderfully weaves everyday happenings with fluid sounds and clear visions along with that little something extra that can be read and savored time and again.”
—Raymond Hammond, editor of The New York Quarterly
“A would-be suicide pulled in from a ledge, a woman screaming in a subway; we stay with Taylor as he looks for meaning—as we all look for it—in the face of random, often incomprehensible events. We stay with him through these hypnotic poems, understanding, finally, that it is he who stays with us.”
—Grace Zabriskie, poet, actor, and visual artist
“These are poems that feel just like San Francisco. Graceful, mournful, they have all the indifference of a street that pisses on your iron gate of belief. They are of a beauty abandoned and rolling and screaming under the wheels of headlights in the Tenderloin night. They are the shared paralysis of city life. These poems hang in the air like dust in the sun. Beauty and waste.”
—Mark Eitzel, American Music Club
BACK COVER
With stark and honest imagery, these poems convey the beauty, wonder, and despair of urban life, bringing San Francisco and its denizens alive with compassionate and insightful portraits of the human condition. Taylor’s poems are the songs of streets and bars and celebrate the manifold humanity of the city.
INTERVIEWS
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