Last Thursday evening, a sizeable audience of students and English faculty members squeezed into the cozy Mandel Center for the Humanities Reading Room for an unusually highly anticipated poetry reading. The poetry reading was sponsored by the American Studies program and the School of Night, a reading series organized through the Creative Writing program, and featured poet Tess Taylor, whose work tells stories about family, heritage and country.

Taylor's poetry became popular when Irish poet Eavan Boland selected her 2003 chapbook, The Misremembered World, for publication by the Poetry Society of America. She recently released her first full volume of poetry, a publication of Red Hen Press called The Forage House, from which most of the poems she read were taken.
Prof. Elizabeth Bradfield (ENG), very excited to have her on campus, introduced Taylor graciously: "Tess Taylor is a poet whose work I've admired since I first encountered it," she said as Taylor stepped up to the podium with her readings and a very earnest and joyful countenance. "It's especially wonderful to be here in October, the month of ghosts," Taylor said, "when I'm going to be reading about ghosts-family ghosts, national ghosts."

The poet's works form the body of a conversation about history and legacy, especially her family's, as she is a descendant of founding father Thomas Jefferson. Over the past several years, Taylor said that she has spent time at Jefferson's Virginia plantation home, Monticello. She spoke with reverence about the time she has spent in recent years accompanying archeologists on their excavations of the former slave quarters at Monticello. "Part of this book began with family stories and part of it from researching stories that I did not know about slavery in my family," Taylor said. Being confronted by the history of slave-keeping in her family, seeing and experiencing the places where Jefferson's enslaved lived and touching the objects that they left behind all added gravity to her poetry.

Taylor read a handful of poems, transitioning from one to the next very gracefully, telling the audience about the moments, places in the country and family's history that inspired her to write. One of her most haunting works was a poem called "Southampton County Will 1745," which facilitated a chilling characterization of Jefferson. The poem opened with the reading of a will, and went on to elaborate upon Jefferson's love of books-a theme that transformed into a detailed picture of how the grandeur of his lifestyle was built upon the backs of his slaves.

The poem's closing lines sent a shiver down my back: "And feel my pen's weight: / Who bartered / for this parchment made with a knife? / Whose life was traded? / Luxury of blind and delicate pages / On which spines does this volume rest?"
In another poem, called "A Letter to Jefferson from Monticello," Taylor talks about what she feels that she inherited from her family and from Jefferson, with lines like "O architect of hopes and lies, / brilliant, fascinating-/ ambitious foundering father I revere and hate and see myself in." Taylor distinguished between literary inheritance and historical inheritance, and how what she has inherited historically has influenced what she has inherited as a writer. "There are the official histories," she went on, "but part of this book is the lore, the family lore." After reading another poem, "Altogether Elsewhere," she reflected on this inheritance and the lore that surrounds it, calling it "legends of the grandmother, legends of the self, legends of the president."

After Taylor's reading came to a close, she eagerly accepted questions from the crowd of young writers and experienced faculty. Taylor's seemingly effortless free verse work and her confessional style lead to a reading that was both emotionally anchored and historically sound. The audience slowly started asking questions, bringing about a creatively edifying conversation and adding a pleasant close to the evening.