Recently, I headed to the North Carolina mountains to meet with artist and poet Ted Pope. You’re almost always guaranteed to learn something while visiting Ted, for instance, what Lazarus Taxa, the title of his two-volume project, means.
A Lazarus taxon (plural taxa) is a grouping that disappears from the record for one or more periods, only to appear again later. Ted’s two taxa, “Someday You’ll Meet Poetry” and “I Almost Quit Writing” evolved from his vast archives, some of which had indeed disappeared.
Ted, laid low by health concerns and financial woes, “Almost Quit Writing.” Later this summer, when WayWord Books releases our third title, you will be so glad he didn’t.
In lines deceptively simple, he paints a singular vision of the world, writing about birds in Monet’s garden as “Architects of the future. Field stripping cigarettes to line their nests” and throughout acknowledges our reluctance to embrace poetry, while letting us know it is inevitable:
even if you don’t want to.
…
Poetry
will introduce itself like a driver cutting
you off on the highway.