Taylor Byas

Here for the poet’s return to Tumblr. PhD Candidate. Writer. Editor. Smol queen. Books: BLOODWARM (2021), SHUTTER (2022), I DONE CLICKED MY HEELS THREE TIMES (forthcoming, August 2023)

[taylorbyas1]

My debut full-length poetry collection, I DONE CLICKED MY HEELS THREE TIMES, is out today! 🥹💜💛

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Inspired by The Wiz, this debut, full-length poetry collection celebrates South Side Chicago and a Black woman’s quest for self-discovery—one that pulls her away from the safety of home and into her power.

I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times takes its inspiration and concept from the cult classic film The Wiz to explore a Black woman’s journey out of the South Side of Chicago and into adulthood. The narrative arc of The Wiz—a tumultuous departure from home, trials designed to reveal new things about the self, and the eventual return home—serves as a loose trajectory for this collection, pulling readers through an abandoned barn, a Wendy’s drive-thru, a Beyoncé video, Grandma’s house, Sunday service, and the corner store. At every stop, the speaker is made to confront her womanhood, her sexuality, the visibility of her body, alcoholism in her family, and various ways in which narratives are imposed on her.

Subverting monolithic ideas about the South Side of Chicago, and re-casting the city as a living, breathing entity, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times spans sestinas, sonnets, free-verse, and erasures, all to reimagine the concept of home. Chicago isn’t just a city, but a teacher, a lingering shadow, a way of seeing the world.

[geryone]

I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, Taylor Byas

[smokefalls]

They always ask Well can’t we separate the abuser from the art? And yet the artist marries his art with his darkness, serves it on a plate of wood. What are these sketches but a harvest of your crimes?

Taylor Byas, "The Ongoing Debate" from Resting Bitch Face

[smokefalls]

I’ve never gotten used to living alone. I talk myself through jump scares in scary movies, make shutters of my fingers. Once, at night, I walked past the television and was startled by the motion captured in the glass. I didn’t think I could cast a shadow with so little light. And yet there I was, a shapeless ghost blacker than the black of the sleeping screen. Shit, it’s just me, I said, as if that soothed the fear. As if I could not haunt myself.

Taylor Byas, "Essay on Shuttering" from Resting Bitch Face

[leehallfae]

“some / days, i lay in the morgue / of darkness, hyper-alone, / and the sunlight, so audacious, paints / the color back onto my cheeks.”

— taylor byas, “i begin the day thinking”

[taylorbyas1]

“And So You Want a Poem” by Taylor Byas, after Anita Scott Coleman.

Originally published in Frontier Poetry

[lunchboxpoems]

“THE THERAPIST ASKS ME, ‘WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?'”

I think of the word hunger, both a noun and something my hands are capable of. How my parents made a little god

of me when they fed them, placed a snow globe in my palms’ chalice. Inside the dome, a sleeping city I’d shake awake, shake back

to their hurting—I promise there’s an answer to your question in here somewhere. Every night, I whipped the glitter into a storm

and the same small figurines grasped at one another in the cold; nothing changed this. Some nights, I wound the metal key

for a lullaby and when no one danced, I questioned my own God. I played the shrill song until it yawned into a dirge

or some sort of warning, and I would say that maybe this is a metaphor for life, or love, but I know you’d make sure to write

that down. And you’re nodding because you’re so sure you know where this is going— yes, sometimes even our most precious things

can slip through our fingers. When I shattered it, I couldn’t make a noise. A wisp of the music box’s song escaped the glass like a spirit,

there was no difference between the feeling of water and blood beneath my feet. You leaning forward like this is gossip (and this too

is another way to hunger) but my life was changed. I stepped right into the glass because I thought that would be the worst part,

and it wasn’t. Knifed an ugly tree into the sole. My scars grew fruit that scabbed over, dropped in the new season. The remembering hurt

more than the living because shame dials in. You hearing me? I was naive enough to think I could control a life. Even mine.

TAYLOR BYAS

[taylorbyas1]

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[geryone]

I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, Taylor Byas

[jstor]

Patricia Smith's "Ethel's Sestina" is one of ten sestinas highlighted in JSTOR Daily's article highlighting modern poets.

"The sestina form is often attributed to Arnaut Daniel, a twelfth-century Provençal troubadour writing in the Occitan language. Since then, the form has been adopted by countless poets across many different languages, including a lot of poets writing in English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."

Read nine more sestinas, freely available on JSTOR!

[taylorbyas1]

I love when the moon shows her face before sunset 🌖

[taylorbyas1]

Cincinnati on December 1st - the last figments of snow.

[kamreadsandrecs]

Taylor Byas on Writing About Her Hometown

Poet Taylor Byas joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss writing about Chicago, which she does in her Maya Angelou

[feral-ballad]

Taylor Byas, from I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times: Poems; “Painted Tongue”

[Text ID: “my mother and I becoming each other, / her bruises and scars passed down, / family heirlooms that will take / me decades to stop wearing,”]

[wordsthatkeepmyfeetdry]

After the car accident by Taylor Byas

[catmint1]

my mother and I becoming each other, her bruises and scars passed down, family heirlooms that will take me decades to stop wearing,

—Taylor Byas, “Painted Tongue,” I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times: Poems

[teenageread]

Review: Poemhood

Initial and All Thoughts: 

Reading poetry can be a daunting task for some, as there is a lot that people just “don’t get”. From the references, lyrical vertices, to the symbolism that does not make sense due to the few words or vague languages most poetry writers use. In Poemhood, the authors work together to make this a poetry book that anyone can understand with explanations after each poem to get synopsis on what the theme was, about the author, truly allowing readers to grasp the meaning of each poem as soon as they finished reading it. Divided into four volumes, the authors center this novel around the Black Voice both of today and the past, as they feature poetry artists from mythological times, to those found in recent media. This collection of poetry is written for a younger audience as where the topics are quite deep and traumatic, the language used is not, with words to understand the suffering without being explicit. Where some poems dwell in the mourning of lost Black lives, this is not a depression collection, but a hopeful one; showing the pride and strength of the Black community, uplifting their voices to share about their hopes for the future, along with the sadness of the past. Overall, a  fantastic collection of poetry and one worth the read!

[feral-ballad]

Taylor Byas, from I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times: Poems; “To the city I wish to get to know”

[Text ID: “tell me, / which constellation / looks like me? Which star / should I follow home?”]