Work of a Poet

Author: Richard Tavenner

Publisher: Chax (2024)

Richard Tavenner is a poet who, like William Blake, sees “the universe in a grain of sand,” his grains being the natural world around him, including in his own garden; his family, his work as an electrician which as he practices it is a kind of community building service; his many friends over a decades-long span of time; and language itself, including a history of poetry from the ancient Chinese to our own time of both difficulties and amazing discoveries. His lifelong work as represented in Work of a Poet is a revelation about practices in poetry that are still possible, and both reflect and point forward to a future of continued humanity, continued sharing of our resources, our visions, our love.

I believe poetry, at its best, to be our primal language. Its vocabulary of images from our natural world are instinctively recognized and known with an understanding that precedes and gives foundation to abstraction and intellectualization. Writing serves memory. Memory serves speech. It is in our vocalizing of the poem that we reanimate it and lift it from its half-life in the shade of the closed page. The best poems outlive their era and locale and when given the breath of life, unify the there with the here, and the then with the now.
                 — Richard Tavenner