Some Aid to Navigation

Carey Taylor's work is steeped in the wild reaches of the Northwest coast-crow-dark forests, seaweed tang of low tide, the boom of Pacific surf. Like lush kelp ribbon anchored on jagged rocks, beneath these tender memories lies tumult and loss. In the beginning/ we knew nothing / of charred ground. These poems braid a layered journey in finding new bearings that will meld our/ fractured parts into some kind of beauty. -Gina Hietpas, author of Terrain- Finalist for Washington State Book Awards



In Carey Taylor's Some Aid to Navigation we encounter not only the life of the poet, the sand and salt and waves that first touched that life, but through Taylor's masterfully lyrical narratives we get some aid to navigating our own lives, our own childhoods and losses. Taylor is a poet of both beauty and hardship and those two tides often ebb and flow in a single poem. This is a book of place and personhood, of family and nature, a book you will pick up over and over again.-Matthew Dickman, author of Husbandry