Taggart, Kep — Bacon

Kep Taggart called her book Bacon because life, as she saw it, came in alternating streaks: lean and fat, tears and laughter, good and bad. The poems follow that rule with gusto. Hollywood, taxis, cars, relatives, cold remedies, psychics, friendship, suicide, birthdays, pets, parties, and spiritual speculation all pass through a comic voice alert to the absurdity of ordinary life. Taggart could turn suddenly serious, but she distrusted solemnity that could not survive a joke. This edition resets all seventy-nine poems from the 1929 source book, restores multi-page poems to continuous form, and keeps subtitles and occasional dedications with their poems. The surviving biography is thin; the work, at least, is now available to speak at full length.