“Good News Bad News” by Bruce Taylor

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Bruce Taylor

GOOD NEWS BAD NEWS

Nothing’s what it used or ought to be:

always too much of this, never enough

of that, only a drop left to drink,

no one to drink it with. Everything is

a miracle, or the miracle fades,

the glory of the world goes or goes on

without us, as far as we know, which is

little or nothing, chosen, as we are, or

exempted, delivered or abandoned we won’t

know until it happens, if it happens at all.

—from Rattle #44, Summer 2014

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Bruce Taylor: “I started writing because I was a reader and those two things, and ‘running my mouth,’ as my father used to call it, were the only things I seemed to do well. Then I did it to try and get girls, successful only in that I had been so un- previously. Then to get attention, mostly from teachers. Then, at the tiny college I attended, to fit in with the even tinier artsy-fartsy crowd (and to get girls). Then to get into grad school, then to stay there. Then to get a job, then to keep it. A man, as the Bible says, may not ‘add a cubit to his stature,’ but you can always add a line to your Vita sheet. All along I thought my life made me write, of course it was the other way around. I have always been astounded, and amused, when people, over the last 50 years, say they admire my discipline, my persistence as a writer, in the face of an often massive indifference. Full disclosure, give me a little time and quiet and it’s one of the three things, well, four, if you count eating and drinking separately, that I love to do.”