Goodreads: Letters to Karen Carpenter and Other Poems, Review by Alarie Tennille …
If you’re a poetry lover, I’m sure you’ve shared my experience of finding ONE poem in a journal or anthology and liking it so much that you began tracking down the author. That’s how I discovered Richard Allen Taylor. The poem was “The Scarecrow,” available for you to read at Your Daily Poem online. I enjoyed his earlier books, so signed up for an advance purchase of this one.
Even though he now lives by the beach, it’s been a rough few years for Taylor. His beloved wife died. Instead of burying himself in the pain, he wrote this collection as a remembrance and tribute to her. The book is divided into four sections that suit his theme of letters: Undeliverable (we just don’t have a P.O. address for heaven or any of its alternatives), followed by Special Delivery, Postcards, and Change of Address, which is an apt title for his physical move and his moving forward in life. I expect you to get a bit teary at times, even though Taylor has the gift for understatement. He knows the importance of “show/don’t tell”—the mark of a good author. Because I’m of the same generation, I related to the Karen Carpenter section and was delighted to find my distant cousin, Toni Tennille (who’s still alive), in several poems. Taylor showed both his appreciation for gifted women and his empathy for how much harder they must struggle to become an icon.
As usual, Taylor often surprises us with quirky, wry passages. In the second poem, “Recruiting You, Karen, as a Pen Pal,”
You hesitate at my suggestion we communicate
in writing. I agree it’s a one-sided proposition
since you can’t reply, except by putting italics
in my head…
I found it touching when he confessed to a pinch of jealousy in his admiration for Karen C. in “Feeling Close to You,” as he writes to her, saying “that ‘Close to You’ strikes me as a work of genius … I wish for my lines to live in so large a house.” He also writes to Karen about his wife, telling her he named a distant star for Julie.
He balances the pain of a long illness by celebrating the small respites and pleasures of their happy marriage. In “Gifts,” he asks Julie during her remission,
How could I know your sickness would bring us gifts?
Your forced absence from work zipped us together like
the front halves of a winter coat. Your loss of income
made me nimbler, more jugglesome, able to stretch a ten-
dollar bill from Monday to Thursday…
A few pages later, he again deflects the pain a bit by imagining what Julie would say:
I’m still grieving my wife. She’s probably looking
down disapprovingly, whispering to her fellow Heavenites,
“He’s helpless without me, I shouldn’t have left him behind…”
(from “Damaged”)
Oh, but it does get worse.
…The COVID pandemic merely
the first of twelve plagues God has planned. But what
a whiner I am…
As we move toward the end of the book, Taylor looks back at his past and begins to find some peace and enjoy the present. I especially enjoyed his anecdotes of childhood living in Japan, because I have my husband’s similar stories to compare. You’ll need to read these warmer memories to ease your empathy pangs. This is a skillfully balanced book.
Alarie Tennille
alariepoet.com
Thanks to Alarie Tennille of Kansas City, MO, for her kind and generous review on Goodreads of Letters to Karen Carpenter and Other Poems. This review is reposted here with her permission.
Richard Allen Taylor, Poet 