“These poems transport me. While they have a Whitmanian sensibility, they are uniquely Tayyar. No one can walk away from this collection without realizing “the world around him was full of latent magic.” And while this collection resonates magic, it is full of loss, that while people run into the streets, they are also holding out their “arms to embrace everything/ That we could never hold.” There is an utter tenderness too, as in “The Artist of Helen Street” whose “hands are shaping the final turrets of a sand castle” in a photograph and she smiles “not because you believe the castle will last forever, but because you know the sea can only swallow one of them at a time.” I long for such hope, transcendence, and honesty in a collection—a book that acts as both a mirror to the world and the world within this world—and I am thankful for Tayyar’s Magic Carpet Poems for being one of those rare collections that transport me in the very ways I need to be transported.”
—Kelly Moffett, author of Waiting for a Warm Body to Fill It and Bird Blind
