The poems in The Downstairs Dance Floor are inhabited by 
family survivors––a father and mother widowed early, who in a 
second marriage made the best of their losses; the only child of that 
marriage; a distant uncle who devoted his life to music; a widowed 
stepfather in his declining years; others who, when the time comes, 
look for meaning in living alone. The other main character in this 
collection is, of course, Death. Using old family photos, letters, and 
anecdotes from friends and family members, the poet tries to 
imagine the unsatisfied dreams of those no longer able to tell their 
own stories.

"The Downstairs Dance Floor is a collection that moves a cast of 
characters—mother, father, step-father, child—from old 
photographs to lives tenuously clung to in contemporary nursing 
homes. Graham's compassion for her elders bespeaks her own 
sense of mortality, and every poem here captures the exact details—
the position of hands in a snapshot or the pieces of an unfinished 
jigsaw puzzle—that reveal a mature talent. Dancing effortlessly 
through forms as demanding as the pantoum and villanelle, Graham 
transforms memory into the memorable."—R.S. Gwynn, Series 
Judge

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TAYLOR GRAHAM earned an M.A. in Comparative Literature from 
the University of Southern California. She has been a volunteer 
search-and-rescue dog handler for the past thirty years; she and her 
husband, Hatch, have responded to hundreds of missions with their 
trained German Shepherds.