Word: taylors
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...anything more than a nameless bum without his box, chains and death-defying stunts? Would we drop Hugh Grant's name nearly as often without his infamous exploits? Would Linda Tripp be a household name if she wasn’t' a self-professed double talking snoop? Would Annie Taylor be an enduring symbol of American ambition if it wasn't for her unprecedented trip over the Niagara Falls in a barrel of her own making? Hardly...
...astutely say, although Harry, Hugh and Linda indeed claim important places in our collective memory, "Annie Taylor" doesn't really ring a bell. A woman the first over the fearful falls? Impossible...
...impossible: merely the forgotten truth. Poet Joan Murray, in her epic poem Queen of the Mist, details the sad life and short fame of Annie Taylor, an elderly and utterly destitute school teacher living at the turn of the century who devised and executed what seemed the perfect plan for money and fame. After building with her thin hands a barrel to enclose her body like a womb and shelter her from her fall over the raging ledge of water, Annie Taylor subsequently became the first person in history to propel herself down the length of Niagara Falls...
...poem. The barrel, Annie's self-made womb, becomes in the end Annie's self-made tomb as Annie watches herself disintegrate within the short and petty memory of history. Eventually she is even called an imposter when the idealistic collective imagination consumes memory and literally recreates "Annie Taylor" into a blonde, beautiful symbol of female youth and fertility. Perhaps if Annie Taylor fell over the falls 40 years earlier her story would have been different. Perhaps then we would not remember young and handsome Bobby Leach, the famous "first man to go over the falls in a barrel" (five...
...James Taylor comes on, everyone sighs nostalgically, and we all get up to dance...