Nathanael Tagg
is the author of two poetry collections: Animal Virtue (WordTech Editions 2018) and Green Jesus (WordTech Editions 2021). His poems and book reviews are published or forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. Among his poetry influences are Emily Dickinson, Carl Dennis, and Robinson Jeffers. He has an MFA from Rutgers and is an Associate Professor of English at Cecil College. He and his wife live with their daughter in Lancaster, PA.
Praise for Green Jesus:
“To read Tagg’s collection of poems is to enter the luminous boundary land between body, spirit and earth. It is a place where the complex intimacies of a human life—a newborn daughter, a past faith, a world in jeopardy—are gifted new meaning by the song of a blue whale, a grove of redwoods, the ‘olfactory genius’ of a bear. With each line, Tagg leads us over new horizons of sense and thought, ‘spying common ground heretofore unseen.’ An urgent and beautiful journey.”–John T. Price, author of Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships
“‘He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief,’ Hawthorne wrote of Melville, ‘and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other.’ In his unflinchingly honest earthly and heavenly confrontation Green Jesus, Tagg excavates and reburies his Christian evangelical faith and what he calls his ‘agnosticism about my agnosticism,’ moving toward a belief in what he calls a ‘green Jesus’: ‘something like a god of the eco-conscious,’ ‘the Christ of oak and sycamore taxing skin, bone, blood.’ Confronting with the furor of a jeremiad an ‘Evil Trinity’ that includes climate change—‘Your wildlings: / rising seas and storms, fires / and floods, droughts, reefs (skeletal)’—Tagg celebrates blue whale, sturgeon, the olfactory system of the bear, Jesus lizard ‘running on water,’ and finds in Whitman’s ‘hopeful green stuff woven’ of the living and not-yet-perished world both a loss and a recovery of Belief, ‘a cross dis- or reappearing.’”–Bruce Beasley, author of All Soul Parts Returned
“In over 60 well-crafted poems, Tagg gives us a sustained meditation on American history, 21st century life, and the possibility of faith—and does so without didacticism, without obvious debt to other poets, and, most remarkably, without too much cynicism. I hope this is one volume of many from Tagg. Green Jesus feels like the beginning of a library full of such meditations, and in an era of vain tweets and empty hashtags, we could use such a library.”–Aaron Belz, author of Soft Launch
Praise for Animal Virtue:
“The charm of Nathanael Tagg’s Animal Virtue comes from its confident, unpretentious expression of curiosity about language and nature, its insights into everyday coincidences and encounters, and the daring to navigate the rocky waters between science and religion. His poems speak eloquently—and humorously—about the human impulse to search for greater meaning and connection. An exceptional debut!”–Rigoberto González, author of The Book of Ruin
“‘No, you need not give me a script,’ writes Nathanael Tagg. No indeed. Animal Virtue brims over with curiosity, observation, and sheer knowledge, whether of literature, art, or the animal kingdom; the resulting script is no one’s but his own. Urbane and controlled, his poems still seethe with restless wit.”–Rachel Hadas, author of Questions in the Vestibule
Readings:
-Turning Wheel, West Art, 816 Buchanan Ave, Lancaster, PA 17603, 8:00 p.m on 11/20/23
-Cecil College Creative Writing Prize (3CWP) Award Ceremony and Student/Faculty Reading, Zoom (http://cecil.mobi/3CWP-Award-Ceremony), 5:30-7:30
-2nd Saturday Poets (Jackson Inn, 101 N Dupont Rd, Wilmington, DE 19807), 5:00-7:00 p.m. on 10/10/20 (to be rescheduled due to COVID-19)
-Imaginary Gardens Reading Series (Mister Toad’s, 1002 Howard St, Omaha, NE, 68102), 7:00 p.m. on 12/17/19
-3CWP Awards Ceremony (The Palette & The Page, 120 E Main St, Elkton, MD, 21921), 5:00-8:00 p.m. on 4/12/19
-Book signing at The Palette & The Page (120 E Main St, Elkton, MD, 21921), 5:00-8:00 p.m. on 4/5/19
-Berks Bards (Studio 420, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, 201 Washington St, Reading, PA, 19602), 6:00 p.m. on 3/7/19
-The Writing Center at Cecil College (1 Seahawk Dr, North East, MD 21901), 1:30 p.m. on 3/26/18
-Kendall Young Library (1201 Willson Ave, Webster City, IA 50595), 6:30 p.m. on 6/28/18
-Author Talks, Rutgers MFA students and alumni (Military Park 51 Park Pl, Newark, NJ 07102), noon on 8/7/18
-The Turning Wheel reading series, DogStar Books (401 W Lemon St, Lancaster, PA 17603), 7 p.m. on 8/9/18
-Town Square Coffee House (125 Central Ave NE, Orange City, IA 51041), summer 2018
-Lancaster Poetry Exchange reading series, Barnes & Noble (1700 Fruitville Pike, Lancaster, PA 17601), 7:30 p.m. in Oct. 2018 or Jan. 2019
Professional inquiries: nathanaeltagg@gmail.com