The Last Time As We Are

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 Everything”