“Jo Taylor's poems open wide the world in blue-eyed wonder. She can balance in a word ballet equally breathtaking, a sonnet, a pantoum, pull you into an Indiana farm, a museum painting or a historic letter to a war weary soldier. Taylor makes you see with new eyes, feel with an open heart. With Cameo Roles readers will only want more and more and more. “
Ruth Moose, The Librarian

“In Jo Barbara Taylor’s enthralling new collection, Cameo Roles, readers can’t help but feel instantly absorbed by an engaging assortment of characters and diverse heroines. Taylor writes with an uncanny sense of timing and rhythm combined with a remarkable ability to engage the heart and soul of readers until they feel one with each appearance or beautifully-scripted vignette, yet in the end what will remain is the echo of one voice; of a captivating and beautiful writer.”
Carol Lynn Grellas, A Thousand Tiny Sorrows

“Cameo Roles sets before us those moments full of presence and power that live in the mind’s and the heart’s eye even as the surrounding moments fade. From dark memories that begin with 'Bats streaming from a daytime nest, like yarn / pulled from a skein' to old men leaving a restaurant who turn to their white-haired ladies with 'Why don't you girls wait here while / we get the car', the moments given in Taylor’s poems let whole lives shine through.”
Diane Gilliam, Kettle Bottom