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The Flying Change: Poems
Henry Taylor’s poems in The Flying Change embrace a wide range of subjects and tones. Taylor’s concern with the rural anecdote, demonstrated in his two earlier books of poetry, The Horse Show at Midnight and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards, is here broadened to include not only funny stories called “snapshots” but also extended meditations on change and death.
Several of these poems take up the dark themes of the world’s randomness and our helplessness in the face of unforseen disasters. In “Landscape with Tractor,” the mundane task of mowing a field is interrupted by the discovery of a decaying corpse. In other poems Taylor treats similarly macabre situations with an undertone of dark humor, as when he writes of inviting the lightning in while bathing during a thunderstorm.
Throughout, Taylor combines everyday speech with careful control of form. In the title poem, “The Flying Change,” he explores the equestrian term literally and metaphorically.
but for a moment the shifting world suspends
its flight and leans toward the sun once more,
as if to interrupt its mindless plunge
through works and days that will not come again.
I hold myself immobile in the bright air,
sustained in time astride the flying change.
The poems in this collection are sometimes disturbing, sometimes gentle and peaceful. They are all the work of a poet who writes carefully and thoughtfully.
Several of these poems take up the dark themes of the world’s randomness and our helplessness in the face of unforseen disasters. In “Landscape with Tractor,” the mundane task of mowing a field is interrupted by the discovery of a decaying corpse. In other poems Taylor treats similarly macabre situations with an undertone of dark humor, as when he writes of inviting the lightning in while bathing during a thunderstorm.
Throughout, Taylor combines everyday speech with careful control of form. In the title poem, “The Flying Change,” he explores the equestrian term literally and metaphorically.
but for a moment the shifting world suspends
its flight and leans toward the sun once more,
as if to interrupt its mindless plunge
through works and days that will not come again.
I hold myself immobile in the bright air,
sustained in time astride the flying change.
The poems in this collection are sometimes disturbing, sometimes gentle and peaceful. They are all the work of a poet who writes carefully and thoughtfully.
- GenresPoetry
Hardcover
First published November 1, 1985
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156 people want to read
About the author
Henry S. Taylor
15 books7 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database named Henry Taylor.
Henry S. Taylor is an American Poet and winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his book The Flying Change .
Taylor was raised as a Quaker in rural Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1965. He received his MFA from Hollins University (formerly Hollins College) in 1966, after which he taught literature and co-directed the MFA program in creative writing at American University from 1971-2003.
Henry S. Taylor is an American Poet and winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his book The Flying Change .
Taylor was raised as a Quaker in rural Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1965. He received his MFA from Hollins University (formerly Hollins College) in 1966, after which he taught literature and co-directed the MFA program in creative writing at American University from 1971-2003.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 24, 2021
There are 18 poems in this collection that won Taylor the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1986.
Taylor’s use of imagery and past reflections are powerful. The poems that I enjoyed most were able to directly relate to my own experiences.
Here are the seven poems that were five star material.
1. Landscape with Tractor - every few weeks the grassy field is cut with a bush hog. But one morning in the field nearest the road the author finds a dead body that will haunt him for years. Very powerful imagery.
2. Getting Himself Together - a man has to periodically escape the pain of living in civilization when he goes to his cottage in the woods far away from everyone.
3. Shapes, Vanishings - some thirty years later a man sees a teacher who had been mean to him when he was a child. He reflects on why he harbors the slights and is unable to let go. He decides to not approach her.
4. Taking to the Woods - the protagonist feels unsafe logging in the woods and becomes preoccupied with death. He reflects on a railroad man who was crushed when he was coupling two railroad cars - something the man had done thousands of times before. Could a similar thing happen to himself.
5. Tradition and the Individual Talent - funny poem about how a man got his foxhounds to stop chasing deer.
6. Green Springs the Tree - man watches his toddler son learn to walk
7. Hawk - a man learns to communicate with a hawk
5 stars
Taylor’s use of imagery and past reflections are powerful. The poems that I enjoyed most were able to directly relate to my own experiences.
Here are the seven poems that were five star material.
1. Landscape with Tractor - every few weeks the grassy field is cut with a bush hog. But one morning in the field nearest the road the author finds a dead body that will haunt him for years. Very powerful imagery.
2. Getting Himself Together - a man has to periodically escape the pain of living in civilization when he goes to his cottage in the woods far away from everyone.
3. Shapes, Vanishings - some thirty years later a man sees a teacher who had been mean to him when he was a child. He reflects on why he harbors the slights and is unable to let go. He decides to not approach her.
4. Taking to the Woods - the protagonist feels unsafe logging in the woods and becomes preoccupied with death. He reflects on a railroad man who was crushed when he was coupling two railroad cars - something the man had done thousands of times before. Could a similar thing happen to himself.
5. Tradition and the Individual Talent - funny poem about how a man got his foxhounds to stop chasing deer.
6. Green Springs the Tree - man watches his toddler son learn to walk
7. Hawk - a man learns to communicate with a hawk
5 stars
February 20, 2013
Taylor takes the disturbing moments that stick in one's mind for a long, long time (e.g. someone losing a finger, finding a corpse while mowing a large country lawn, witnessing the accidental death of a horse) and turns them into poetry. I wouldn't say haunting since memories similar to these (like visiting a dying relative in the hospital, realizing that a loved one can no longer control his/her bodily functions, or like the previous examples - something more gruesome) affect everyone. I think that the poetry is in articulating those memories, giving them a tangible existence so they can be shared without losing their impact.
Highly recommended for adults 30 & older. I don't think people younger than this will get it, maybe some of them, but I think a bit of life experience is needed before being able to appreciate these.
Highly recommended for adults 30 & older. I don't think people younger than this will get it, maybe some of them, but I think a bit of life experience is needed before being able to appreciate these.
August 7, 2018
It won The Pulitzer Prize…but it didn’t really resonate with me. There were a few I enjoyed: Landscape with Tractor; More than One Way; One Morning, Shoeing Horses; Barbed Wire; The Flying Change.
And some good lines:
- “There are people dying today, he says, / that never died before.” – p. 5 (from Somewhere Along the Way)
- “His brain was small, / but he knew one thing: all he wanted to do / was kill me. Men mean pain. And what I knew / was, it can work both ways/ I wanted to shoot / that fucker, just to see him jump and fall.” – p. 34 (from Sick in Soul and Body Both)
- “I cannot guess. A lost / earring, perhaps, or the tap to the water meter; / no relics lie in this developed earth.” – p. 41 (from The Muse Once More)
- “like a hoe or a pitchfork, watching the ground / as I watched it, not thinking of the sun / moving on as it moved over me, as it will / when the rocks and water are alone here again.” – p. 51 (from Projectile Point, Circa 2500 B.C.)
And some good lines:
- “There are people dying today, he says, / that never died before.” – p. 5 (from Somewhere Along the Way)
- “His brain was small, / but he knew one thing: all he wanted to do / was kill me. Men mean pain. And what I knew / was, it can work both ways/ I wanted to shoot / that fucker, just to see him jump and fall.” – p. 34 (from Sick in Soul and Body Both)
- “I cannot guess. A lost / earring, perhaps, or the tap to the water meter; / no relics lie in this developed earth.” – p. 41 (from The Muse Once More)
- “like a hoe or a pitchfork, watching the ground / as I watched it, not thinking of the sun / moving on as it moved over me, as it will / when the rocks and water are alone here again.” – p. 51 (from Projectile Point, Circa 2500 B.C.)
July 10, 2011
Taylor’s poems pose two extremes. Some have a musing, retrospective quality (often focused on aging which is odd when you consider he was only 43 when this book was published). Others present a horrific event: a farrier’s finger torn off by a horse shoe nail, a railroad worker impaled by a coupling. My favorite is “The Muse Once More” which seems a perfect poem of Taylor’s contemplative genre.
March 20, 2022
I'm often surprised at what wins the Pulitzer or any poetry award. Recently, I read that the board can and has overruled the jurors on the Pulitzer committee. (Not that that was the case here) So even though awards are a crapshoot, I expect poems that are astounding. Poems that, even if I don't like much, rise above my preferences to reward me with the rationale behind the award. Yet I see nothing special here. I like several poems, more for the story behind them than the poem itself. And Taylor has some stories: finding bodies in his field, watching fingers being lost, the ripped throat of a horse, and expected disaster in others. Nevertheless, telling a tale should not be all, there needs be a poetic element.
I am tempted to rate this at two stars, for me it certainly hovers between two and three. Sure, it's worth a read, and the stories, as I say, are interesting but don't expect Pulitzer Prize caliber work.
I am tempted to rate this at two stars, for me it certainly hovers between two and three. Sure, it's worth a read, and the stories, as I say, are interesting but don't expect Pulitzer Prize caliber work.
June 19, 2017
hard to understand how this book won the pulitzer prize.. the form is atrocious and so are the sentences, its like being a swimmer presented with a pool of lead, would you want to dive into it? -no!
April 17, 2025
The GOAT
June 11, 2021
flying change (noun) – a movement in horse riding in which the leading leg at the canter is changed without breaking gait while the horse is in the air
I am 38 years old. Teetering on the edge of middle age. At a point in my life where I have lived long enough to know some things about life but not long enough to know how little knowledge that actually is. Long enough to know that change is life’s only constant but not long enough to completely abandon the possibility of permanence.
Henry Taylor was approaching his middle age when he wrote the poems that are collected in The Flying Change. These poems show that the poet understands that he is soon to have more years behind him than are left in front of him. He acknowledges the inevitability of old age while still clinging tightly to the present.
I have lived long enough to have made thousands of memories and long enough to have forgotten thousands more. Long enough to have met hundreds of people and long enough to have forgotten their names and faces. I can see the face of my high school Latin teacher but I can’t recall her name, even though I spent three years sitting in her class. I remember the name of my girlfriend in fifth grade and the fact that she had blonde hair, but I wouldn’t recognize her now if we were in the same room. Taylor captures the jarring experiences of being faced with the limitation of memory that comes with getting older and the frustration of almost remembering something or someone.
While I have lived long enough to have experienced many things I can’t fully remember, there are some things I will never forget, no matter how much I wish I could. Taylor’s most powerful poems focus on these types of memories. In “Landscape with Tractor,” the speaker describes coming across a dead body while mowing a large field. He recalls the shock of the finding and then laments the fact that from now on, every time he mows that particular patch of grass he will always see her there. In “One Morning, Shoeing Horses”, the speaker says that he is always nervous while shoeing horses because he remembers a day, 10 years before, working alongside a blacksmith who accidentally got his wedding band caught in a driven nail. His yelp of pain spooked the horse and the blacksmith’s finger was torn off of his hand. In another poem about a catastrophe brought about by spooked horse, “Barbed Wire,” Taylor describes the horrifying scene of a horse flinching while it was trying to eat some grass on the other side of a barbed wire fence.
Not all of the poems in The Flying Change are dark, however. Some are funny and introduce us to colorful characters, such as the man in “Varieties of Religious Experience”:
The Flying Change is a strong, strong collection of poems and well-deserving of the Pulitzer Prize Henry Taylor won for it in 1985. The praise of another Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Maxine Kumin, sums it up perfectly:
I am 38 years old. Teetering on the edge of middle age. At a point in my life where I have lived long enough to know some things about life but not long enough to know how little knowledge that actually is. Long enough to know that change is life’s only constant but not long enough to completely abandon the possibility of permanence.
Henry Taylor was approaching his middle age when he wrote the poems that are collected in The Flying Change. These poems show that the poet understands that he is soon to have more years behind him than are left in front of him. He acknowledges the inevitability of old age while still clinging tightly to the present.
Sometimes when I cup water in my hands
and watch it slip away and disappear,
I see that age will make my hands a sieve;
but for a moment the shifting world suspends
its flight and leans to the sun once more,
as if to interrupt its mindless plunge
through works and days that will not come again.
I hold myself immobile in bright air,
sustained in time astride the flying change.
I have lived long enough to have made thousands of memories and long enough to have forgotten thousands more. Long enough to have met hundreds of people and long enough to have forgotten their names and faces. I can see the face of my high school Latin teacher but I can’t recall her name, even though I spent three years sitting in her class. I remember the name of my girlfriend in fifth grade and the fact that she had blonde hair, but I wouldn’t recognize her now if we were in the same room. Taylor captures the jarring experiences of being faced with the limitation of memory that comes with getting older and the frustration of almost remembering something or someone.
At times it is like watching a face you have just met,
trying to decide who it reminds you of —
no one, surely, whom you have ever hated or loved,
but yes, somebody, somebody. You watch the face
as it turns and nods, showing you, at certain angles,
a curve of the lips or a lift of the eyebrow
that is exactly right, and still the lost face eludes you.
While I have lived long enough to have experienced many things I can’t fully remember, there are some things I will never forget, no matter how much I wish I could. Taylor’s most powerful poems focus on these types of memories. In “Landscape with Tractor,” the speaker describes coming across a dead body while mowing a large field. He recalls the shock of the finding and then laments the fact that from now on, every time he mows that particular patch of grass he will always see her there. In “One Morning, Shoeing Horses”, the speaker says that he is always nervous while shoeing horses because he remembers a day, 10 years before, working alongside a blacksmith who accidentally got his wedding band caught in a driven nail. His yelp of pain spooked the horse and the blacksmith’s finger was torn off of his hand. In another poem about a catastrophe brought about by spooked horse, “Barbed Wire,” Taylor describes the horrifying scene of a horse flinching while it was trying to eat some grass on the other side of a barbed wire fence.
Not all of the poems in The Flying Change are dark, however. Some are funny and introduce us to colorful characters, such as the man in “Varieties of Religious Experience”:
This old day-worker, cleaning up
the grounds of an abandoned church,
getting ready to paint & put in glass,
said somebody from away from here
had bought it & was going to start
using it again. Well, it had been
a Methodist church, were these Methodists?
He believed it wasn’t anybody like that,
no sir, he said; it is some of these
holy-sanctified God damn people.
The Flying Change is a strong, strong collection of poems and well-deserving of the Pulitzer Prize Henry Taylor won for it in 1985. The praise of another Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Maxine Kumin, sums it up perfectly:
Like the well-schooled horse changing leads in mid-air, Henry Taylor makes us perceive the grace of that moment of suspension. For him it is a moment of acute recognition of our mortality, our connection to the past, our need to love.
March 27, 2020
Some of the poems are very good, but as a whole I don't like the book too much. Henry Taylor gave a talk at my high school and his cheerful eyes and classically, scientifically open mind seemed like magic.
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January 27, 2017811.54 T2424f 1985
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews