A Simple Country Girl by Taylor Mead

Taylor Mead’s fourth book—his best and funniest—and his first book in twenty years, A Simple Country Girl, is a collection of poems that are bright, ephemeral, and brilliant downtown Zen.

Once Poet Laureate of Andy Warhol’s Factory and now an indomitable octogenarian, Taylor Mead has recently been seen in Jim Jarmusch’s latest, “Coffee and Cigarettes.” He’s a renowned actor, having appeared in innumerable underground classics from Warhol’s “Lonesome Cowboys” to the first film of the Beat generation, “The Flower Thief.” On stage he created the title role in Frank O’Hara’s “The General Returns from One Place to Another” and Michael McClure’s “Spider Rabbit.”

Taylor Mead continues to be the most avant poet on the block, if he were in Japan, he’d be a National Treasure. Here, he’s got a weekly cocktail gig at the Bowery Poetry Club (every Friday at 6:30PM). Who but Taylor Mead could possibly head the list of a series of books published under the Bowery Poetry Club imprint? Described by the New York Times as “that beacon on the Bowery” and proclaimed “the best poetry club in the world” by the Village Voice, the BPC has launched with YBK Publishers a series of books of and on poetry that will bring the freshest poetry to center stage, in fact, much of the work originates right on stage at the Club. Continuing the series of books will bring you the Club’s Bartenders, complete with poetry recipes and “The Bowery Girls,” five young women poets of the Bowery.

Click here to read a sample from this book