AT THE HEART by Charles Taylor

In this work you'll find the past and the present, the grumpy and the funny, the family and the country, and the political and the personal-all tied together by a search for the heart in the heart, the mystical center that binds us to the sacred in each other and the sacred above and around. Like the work of Jack Kerouac, Taylor's book moves beyond the grand secular tradition of modern writing into the unknowable landscapes of the spiritual.

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Imagine

for John Lennon

Imagine you’re standing next
to Russian genius novelist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky with the
other members of the
radical Petrashevsky group, about

to be shot by
fellow soldiers from your
own former military units.
You’re pissing in your
pants, standing in the

December cold, shackled and
hooded; the priest, carrying
Bible and Cross, has
given God’s blessing on
your death, the sentences

have been read, the
tall golden spire on
some church nearby has
gleamed in the clear
sunlight, Dostoyevsky has whispered,

“We’ll be with Christ,”
and his friend Speshnev
has replied “A handful
of dust,” The soldiers
take aim from fifteen

steps away from the
scaffolding, “I understood nothing
before I kissed the
cross,” Dostoyevsky later said.
“They could not bring

themselves to trifle with
the cross.” He remembers
Zola’s The Last Day
of a Condemned Man,
and feels a profound

indifference to both life
or death. He thinks
how if he is
spared life would seem,
every second, endless, and

that would be unbearable.
Suddenly someone appears waving
a white cloth and
the soldiers lower their rifles.
A carriage clatters into

Semenovsky square, and a
sealed envelope from Adjutant
General Sumarkov is presented
and read. It is
the Czar’s sudden pardon.

The joke’s over. When
they untie Grigoryev, they
find he has gone
mad. The rest of
the prisoners feel nothing.

“They could just as
well as have shot
us,” says Durov. Petrashevsky
demands not to be
touched, to put on

his own chains. He’s
placed in a troika
and sent into a
life of endless exile.
Dostoyevsky gets four years

in a Siberian prison
and then must be,
till death, a soldier.
Later he is pardoned
and we have this

gift to the hearts
of all who love
to read and seek
wisdom. Imagine, when your
poor heart feels like

torn tarpaper; Imagine, when
you hear the killing
and torture; imagine and
learn to dwell in
a hope not born

and imagine what Jack*
wrote to Joyce* from
the Slovenia headed for
Tangiers. The ship nearly
floundered in mountainous waves

five hundred miles out.
Jack discovered inside a
luminous calm and wrote:
EVERYTHING IS GOD, NOTHING
EVER HAPPENED EXCEPT GOD

"I tried to write a book that could possibly reach people outside the small poetry culture, but I didn't want to pander or avoid challenging subjects. I didn't wish to hit people over the head with my mystical leanings, but to bring it to the reader in a pleasant way."   Charles Taylor

Along with Pat Littledog, Taylor co-operated Paperbacks Plus Books in Austin, Texas, from 1980 to 1988. The store became an important literary center for the Southwest sponsoring literary readings and plays as well as serving as a home for Slough Press. Business owners John and Marquetta Tilton of Dallas opened several store locations run by famous Texas poets and writers who had not yet achieved widespread notoriety: poet Dr. Ricardo Sanchez in San Antonio and Dr. Hedwig Gorski's infamous Voltaire's Basement bookstore in downtown Austin. All branches of Paperbacks Plus allowed serious poets to live with their families on the store premises while providing a small income managing or selling at the location. Each became a hub of literary and performance activities across generations and styles nurturing the offbeat talents and lifestyles Central Texas is known for. These activities, venues, and people set the stage during the late 1970s and 80s for Austin Poetry Slam scenes. (from Wikipedia)

Dr. Charles Taylor was crowned Beat Poet Laureate at the Revolution Cafe in Texas on Nov. 5, 2011 by the First Annual Beat Poetry and Art Festival in College Station/Bryan, Texas.