Winter from Spring

About the Book

This book is an autobiographical sequence of poems and black and white images following the poet from childhood through despair to recovery and acceptance. It covers eighty or more poems through California, to Colorado, ending with Midwestern poems, always focusing on the poet´s birth place in retrospect, California. After turbulance of the soul, and acceptance, comes love of wife, daughter and family. At the apex of this wonderful book, we know the poet has found faith, that he is friends with his father, and that though not all is resolved, he and the dear wife have found a part of peace, perhaps enough, in South Dakota. This is a book about poetry itself.

About the Author

Charles Taylor was born in 1951 in Ventura, California, and lived the first seven years of his life in Ojai and then in San Luis Obispo. Following a divorce, his mother moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where the future poet subsequently graduated from high school in 1969 and matriculated at Grinnell College. In 1970 Taylor returned to California for a year to live with his father and step-mother. During this time, he attended Sierra College, where he began to study English and to write verse. During 1971 and 1972 the poet lived abroad, traveling through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France. The following year he returned to America, graduating from Grinnell in 1974--with a B.A. in English and history. In 1982 Charles married Marjorie Remacle and completed an M.A. in English and an Ed.S. in higher education, both from the University of Iowa. In 1985 the Taylors moved to Greeley, Colorado, and in 1990 Charles earned an M.F.A. in creative writing, from Colorado State University, where he studied under poet Bill Tremblay. In 1993, after a teaching stint in Illinois, the couple (now with daughter Laurel) moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where they remain today.