Eleanor Ross Taylor

Eleanor Ross Taylor (1920-2011) published six collections of poems between 1960 and 2009. Though obscure for many years, she was “discovered” in 1998. and her work quickly became widely known and praised. Southern, experimental, feminist, intricate, her poems a full of history, especially as it concerns white women in a patriarchal white supremacist South. The Carole Weinstein Prize, the Ruth Lilly Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award are a few of her honors, and most of her poems from the first five books can be found in Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2008, edited by Ellen Bryant Voigt (LSU, 2009).  "Sparrow Eats Chicken Wing" first appeared in Shenandoah 48/2.