Book Review: 'To Let the Sun' by John Allen Taylor

Reviewer: Jace DeAngelo

I like to read a book in its totality, including the editor’s notes, the preface, the table of contents, the end notes, and the annotations. To Let the Sun snared my attention immediately, beginning with the editor’s introduction, in which Patricia Smith writes:

“This America.

“This raucous, malfunctioning, precocious, thuggish, absurdly tender, enviable, poisonous, utterly mercurial snitch of a nation. This bumptious, blustering, broken experiment. This circle of arms, haven for guns and greed, this cult of celebrity, this shelter and sanctuary, this bait for demons and demagogues. This place we call—home.”

I believe poetry is meant to be raw, and that a good poet must wield specificity, emotionality, and wordplay to craft something meaningful. This anthology does all that and more as Taylor experiments with form and presents each poem differently. 

To Let the Sun centers around difficult and weighted topics. There is a lot about faith, specifically Christianity, and the way that it was perverted and used against the author. If you are sensitive to themes of child abuse, molestation, suicide, or religious trauma, I would not recommend this book to you, as these are very pervasive themes throughout every poem.

The author, John Allen Taylor, speaks about fear: “I know/ memory is a compendium/ of fright [...}” in Golden Pothos and ‘You were there at the birth of my terror” in Monster immediately come to mind. Surrounding these seemingly straightforward lines are fresh metaphors, such as a wilting creeping vine plant bearing silent, unknowing witness to the terror the author was made to experience. This sense of fear and helplessness is consistently contrasted by Taylor’s stubborn autonomy: “What use was flesh if not my own/ to give away” in Come Sunday and “But a cat looks like any cat a block away./ I came into the world/ bloody & I will leave it feral” in Confession are great examples of this defiant autonomy. 

My main issue with many modern poets and poetry books is that they often seem afraid to be ugly and shy away from the silly. That is not an issue in a poem in To Let the Sun. I genuinely laughed out loud at the line “the old Darby has nothing on Jesus’s kidneys” in I Keep My Kidney Stones in a Salt Shaker, even as I reread and reconsidered the poem.

While I cannot say for certain that this is where the title originates, Ephesians 4:26 demands that we “Do not let the sun set upon our anger.” This is a call to refrain from emotionality as it will lead to sin. This anthology contends with anger and grief that must be dealt with, but what happens when the words meant to unify us are the same ones used to bind, restrict and tear down? What is “sin” when it is inherited when it is done unto you, when you are a hapless child? What happens when we let the sun? 

Taylor does not hesitate to be unerringly specific, does not equivocate his illustrations of whimsy, and manages to prosodically paint horror without being gruesomely exact. Taylor does what only a great poet can do: letting you experience the emotions of a moment without divulging every gritty detail. While Taylor’s poems are faithful to the ugliness he experienced, this is no monument to, or glorification of, the ugliness itself. It is a testament to his resiliency, his grappling with the aftermath of these experiences, and his ability to rekindle the joy in his life.

It was genuinely difficult not to pick out at least one line from every poem, but some of my favorite lines overall were:

• “the fungal gnats are blooming again” —Anyway

• “Then the lightning bugs [...] a grist of doubt/ and hum [...] Be literal. Be devoured by light.” —History of My Godlessness

• “When the woman was brought before/ Jesus to judge he stooped// to write in the dirt. He set his body down.” —Woe

• “Let us draw near in the making of bread// in the sound of your laughter/ as you watch television three rooms// away [...]” —Invocation

• “I remain/ with the wraiths & their jokes/ their needles & pokes that sustain me” —Hospital Song

• “I enter this memory the way a child creeps/ to the back of the closet [...]” —Into the Garden

• “My mother has trouble/ discerning the starter/ from the splinter, the mother/ from the offspring. I say/ Name the mother & you will/ not lose her[...]” —Making Bread

• “The moon will orbit/ what has calcified within you, what you quelled and mistook/ for a dream. Don’t grimace:/ you have earned/ what happens in the starlessness.” —Horoscope With Calcium

If you enjoy defiant, grieving, loving, experimental poetry filled with blunt truths and snippets of memory and dancing metaphors, To Let the Sun might just be for you.

Pre-order To Let the Sun from The University of Arkansas Press

Jace DeAngelo is an editor of fiction and poetry. They have a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing and a certificate in Editing and Publishing.