Taibl has published most frequently in fields of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry. In the following essay, she discusses binaries and their meanings in "Chocolates."

"Chocolates" is a poem about meeting places; the point where the individual sees himself as a part of the community and where the foreign and exotic appear in the common, elevating the ordinary to the extraordinary. The poem uses opposites, or binaries, to explore how perceived extremes are found within one another. Louis Simpson has explored style binaries, journeying from the structure of traditional English verse to a new kind of non-metrical verse that captures a distinct quality of being American. Simpson uses this nonmetrical verse to polish common scenes to an extraordinary sheen. In "Chocolates," which is a part of the 1980 collection Caviare at the Funeral, a fictionalized Chekhov, the great Russian writer and playwright, is portrayed as an individual with a...