Crystal Taylor

I look the same over there as I do here, and same handle.

Two of my earliest poems. Possibly my favorites. (Sheetrock and Particulate Matter)

@mooninabucket That’s a heck of a day. I hope it inspires art, at least. Yikes. Hope everyone is okay.

I guess things could always be worse 😆 😬

@Koss51209969 @lhallwriter Have it. Love it! 😊

@lhallwriter Thank you. diodeeditions.com/product-page/d…

Authors, drop your book covers below and I'll happily repost some 👇 Be sure to include links also 👍

Two new poems out today. Thank you, @SunlightPress thesunlightpress.com/2026/01/21/poe…

Ooh. I bet this is good!

Yippeee! Happy, happy day!

Fire!

Woot! First rejection of 2026. Progress!

@susanlleary @sho_journal 😲 Wow!

Vannida S. Kol ♥️ “…souls remembering their way / back to the body…” Really loving this poem, first published in @sho_journal Number 4.

Congratulations, all! Love Dishsoap!

Poetry is the only circumstance in which I would voluntarily contemplate Math. And even then, only to throw shade.

@onlypoemsmag I needed that! 💀

a reminder for those who hesitate to write or publish their most personal and vulnerable work: you ain't gotta explain shit to nobody if you don't want to. don't let the opinions of others keep you from expressing yourself through your creative ventures.

@Joseph_Fasano_ Oh, how this warms my heart!

This is the single best thing anyone could ever send to a writer. I'm holding back tears.

I checked my email & screamed over an acceptance email in my (parked) car, a first for me. My first flash fiction acceptance! The feeling of being understood is unmatched! (I saved the Elaine Benes dance moves for when I got home.) So exciting!

Where Love Is - I have a cute little micro out today in @MicromanceMag open.substack.com/pub/micromance…

@ewenglass Ewen, this was a gut punch. It took my breath away. Wow.

What a feeling being in anyone’s top 5 of anything!

@TommyDeanWriter @LascauxReview Good for you! That’s great!

I'm so thrilled to announce that I won the @LascauxReview Flash Fiction contest! Big thanks to the editors! I'm excited for you to read this story soon! lascauxreview.com/contest-result…

@melissacuisine @CowboyJamboree That is a great playlist. Super excited to read All and Then None of You. 💜

In five weeks, @CowboyJamboree will release my short story collection All and Then None of You. If you want an idea of the vibes of the book, check out the playlist below!

My husband’s reaction was not to sweat the small stuff. This is NOT small stuff. This is a travesty. I’m plunging into a dark spiral.

@Joseph_Fasano_ “because it knows that the line between sentimentality and life-saving clarity is razor-thin…” Yes.

I've started a new poetic movement called The New Passion, & if you think I'm kidding, expand this whole post: What is The New Passion? In a world of 24-7 judgment, a culture that asks people, especially young people, to internalize a continuous self-policing of the imagination—a power-driven tactic aimed not at moral enlightenment but at getting people to silence themselves—so many would-be artists are paralyzed by the fear of being perceived as earnest, passionate, genuinely curious, unfashionably human, full of blood and wonder... ...but these qualities are exactly what we hunger for, exactly what we need in our artists, our classrooms, our most private and most public spaces... Especially in a world in which AI flattens all media into "content" and leaves us craving—deeply craving—what is genuine, human, soulful, real... ...especially in a political landscape that erodes all sense of "truth," we need our artists to restore to that concept the deeply felt qualities of what it means to be human. What, then, is The New Passion? A poetics that fears no charge of sentimentality, because it knows that the line between sentimentality and life-saving clarity is razor-thin, and the poet must risk it. A poetics that rejects the disingenuous self-deprecation that is just another form of the narcissism that expects the audience to lean in. A poetics that leans toward the audience, that knows it must earn that audience. Earn... A poetry that turns away from cold irony but turns toward craft, especially rhythmic craft, which is the basis of our breath and being... A poetics that knows "passion" is suffering and joy, ancient and new, and that poetry must renew itself as it has always done: by recovering a radical belief in the other. By not infantilizing the self or the reader into a collection of fears, taboos, accepted truths. A poetics that knows the poem is a moral organism and that it should be held accountable for what it tries to do, but that it should try to do it. That no imagining is a crime if it is done well. With impossible compassion... Because the poet's work is to fail splendidly in the attempt at the impossible: the poem that speaks to all. Because a disdain for the "common" reader is merely a fear of what's common in us, and our task as poets is to say what's common, extraordinarily... Because we live in a world of media-driven false dichotomies, and between the art that is willfully obscure (which comes from fear of being seen) and the art that is simply craftless (which comes from fear of not being seen), there is the art that tries, through a practice of craft so masterful that the craft becomes invisible, to communicate the infinite and common mystery of being alive, of being together and alone. Because the heart is not a formless thing. And every age must find the forms that make it, somehow, free... Let us have a poetics that knows both craft and magic. Let us have a poetics that trades the nihilism and onanism of cleverness for the vision and urgency of wisdom. A poetics that knows the mark of a sick age, which has fallen in love with chaos, is its fear of wisdom and clarity, the ancient truths we have forgotten again and again, the forgetting of which has always led to more chaos... We need a poetics that reaches out, with radical clarity, for the democratic vision of art, a vision which has despite all protest to the contrary been largely abandoned by the institutionalization and "professionalizing" of poetry. Because clarity is not simplicity. It is mystery. Mystery. And, as Lorca once said, "only mystery lets us live, only mystery." And because in a world of destroyers, we need every creator we can get. —Joseph Fasano