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    The Last Time As We Are
    The Last Time As We Are
    The Last Time As We Are
    Ebook108 pages51 minutes

    The Last Time As We Are

    By Taylor Mali

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    About this ebook

    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."

    Not since Taylor Mali has there been a poet the likes of Taylor Mali-he 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 Laureate

    In 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 Everythingâ€
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateOct 1, 2018
    ISBN9781935904854
    The Last Time As We Are
    Author

    Taylor Mali

    TAYLOR MALI is a spoken word poet, teacher advocate, and game designer from New York City. Mali is a four-time National Poetry Slam champion and one of the original poets to appear on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. The author of five collections of poetry and a book of essays on teaching, he is also the inventor of Metaphor Dice, a game that helps writers think more figuratively. He lives in Brooklyn where he is the founding curator of the Page Meets Stage reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club.

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      Book preview

      The Last Time As We Are - Taylor Mali

      More Praise for Taylor Mali

      More Praise

      for Taylor Mali

      The stars were aligned that night in the exact middle of the 60’s when Taylor Mali came into this world. He is doing what he was born to do: a poet-warrior carrying into the present age all that youthful Promethean rebellion and titanic creative energy, now radically fused with the crucial discipline and authority of the true teacher. He who cannot obey himself will be commanded, said Nietzsche, and thus too speaks Taylor Mali, while laughing.

      —Richard Tarnas, Professor of Philosophy and Cultural History at the California Institute of Integral Studies, author of The Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche

      Taylor Mali captures in his irresistible persona and highly engaging poetry the experience of the independent school teacher that he once was: part inspiration, part nag, part coach and friend, part disciplinarian. Kids love him and his poetry…and so do adults, a combination of approbation that is unusual in today’s world.

      —Patrick F. Bassett, President, National Association of Independent Schools

      Title Page

      The Last Time As We Are

      a collection of poetry

      †

      by Taylor Mali

      Write Bloody Publishing

      America’s Independent Press

      Long Beach, CA

      writebloody.com

      Copyright Information

      Copyright © Taylor Mali ©2010

      No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, if living, except for critical articles or reviews.

      Mali, Taylor.

      1st digital edition.

      ISBN: 978-1-935904-85-4

      Interior Layout by Lea C. Deschenes

      Cover Designed by Joshua Grieve

      Proofread by Jennifer Roach

      Edited by Derrick Brown, shea M gauer, Saadia Byram, Michael Sarnowski

      Special thanks to Lightning Bolt Donor, Weston Renoud

      Printed in Tennessee, USA

      Write Bloody Publishing

      Long Beach, CA

      Support Independent Presses

      writebloody.com

      To contact the author, send an email to writebloody@gmail.com

      Dedication

      For Marie-Elizabeth,

      standing in the center of the fire

      Thanks & Acknowledgments

      Many thanks to: Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz; my siblings and all their children; my godfather Edgar Koerner; father figures Galway Kinnell, Billy Collins, and Bob Holman; Jeffrey Kay and his XXL video camera; Sherry Marks and all the residents of the Brown Gardens Assisted Living Residence Hall; and everyone in the New York City spoken word community, especially Lynne Procope, Shappy, Sarah Kay, Rives, and above all my wife and best friend Marie-Elizabeth.

      Print Acknowledgements

      Many thanks to these journals which published the following poems, sometimes in slightly different form:

      Barnwood: When the Activity of the Day is Done and Montreal

      Cadillac Cicatrix: The Last Time as We Are

      Imitation Fruit: Talking to an Identical Twin

      The Nail 10: Whosoever has dreamt of secret basements

      Naugatuck River Review: The Seven Deadly Kappas

      O&S Volume 2 Issue 4: Pink Slip, The Basic Paradox, Tuesday Nights Outside the Church of Gustavus Adolphus, and King Comforter

      Paddlefish: Thrift Shop Chic

      Pank 4: The Last Postcard

      Tampa Review: As With a Marriage and Its Fire

      Recording Acknowledgements

      Audio or video versions of some of the poems in this book can be found, sometimes in slightly different form, on iTunes, YouTube, Audible.com, and on the following CDs and podcasts:

      Indiefeed.com: Reading Allowed and A Dog Named Bodhisattva

      Conviction: Tony Steinberg: Brave Seventh-Grade Viking Warrior and Silver-lined Heart

      Icarus Airlines: Miracle Workers, Pizza, Reading Allowed, Thrift Shop Chic, A Dog Named Bodhisattva, and When Does the Heart Rest?

      Excellence in the Field of Awesomeness (Best of NYC-Urbana 2007-2008): Love Hungry for Itself

      Foreword

      If you love teaching so much, then how come you’re not still doing it?

      I used to hate getting this question after my readings. But it’s a good one. My love for the art of teaching is palpable in my work, and my love for teachers themselves is manifest in everything I do. A poem I wrote over ten years ago, What Teachers Make, has been sent around the world as inspirational cyber spam by well-meaning souls who wish only to remind teachers why they chose to walk the noble path they walk. That’s fine with me. I’ll choose anonymous inspiration over taking credit every time.

      But the fact remains that I said goodbye to my last sixth-grade homeroom class in June of 2000 and haven’t set foot in a

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