The Last Time As We Are HC [Hardcover]

You don't need a classroom to be a teacher, and you don't need to be a teacher to help someone learn a lesson. Taylor Mali's poetry explores this truth in entertaining and plainspoken ways because "the last thing this world needs is another poem" ("The Call to What We Know"). Whether discussing the language of love or the love of language, the poems contained in The Last Time As We Are prove that "He who dares to teach must never cease to learn."THE LAST TIME AS WE AREBecause later that morningthe surgeon would cut mefour times, twice on each side,once on the outsideand once on the inside,leaving me with nothingbut tiny scars, and I would,in a few months' time,be able to be inside youwith nothing - not worry,nor latex - I kissed you awakewhen it was still dark,and you opened to me,and we made lovefor the last time as we are,as God made us,which is to say,as God made me.Someday soon,I will never be a father.Not since Taylor Mali has there been a poet the likes of Taylor Malihe is a man of unique properties. He is tagged as a performance poet, but his performances, rather than being frontal assaults, are leavened by charm and wit and could survive happily on the page. -Billy Collins, U.S. Poet LaureateIn this latest collection, Mali's work buzzes, hums, snaps and zaps, the tour-de-force of Mali on stage having been properly captured and catalogued on the page. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, "Everything Is Everything"