Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary

Karla Kelsey

Reviews of the book

“Kelsey’s poetry understands that language is an unreliable record at best, that images and forms reconfigure and expand, layering meaning as a complex system of possibilities that never rests, that thrives in its own multiplicity.

“This mutability/mutation is carefully exposed in the first section, flood/fold. In ‘Aperture’ One through Four, the poet positions herself and her readers for reception. Just as the words ‘flood' and ‘fold' act as both verbs and nouns, we are prepared for a conflation of creation and creativity, subject and object, thought and the act of thinking. The work is arranged conceptually; each section of text, each blank space, each vertical line of asterisks behaves as an opening—a sliver of light or sensory detail, a glimpse, or an act of waiting, a receptive emptiness. In ‘Aperture One’ the lyrical encounters drop slowly, tenuously connected by a thread of asterisks running down the center of each page, while in ‘Aperture Two’ lines stretch across the page, as eyes might scan a landscape. As with the thinking process at the heart of Kelsey’s work, there is no formal consistency—a style will emerge and retreat, giving way to a new style equally refined, crafted and compelling, equally replaceable.

“...The brilliance of this poetry lies in Kelsey’s joyous application of the world as she receives it to the world of ideas established by Plato as a framework for the book. She leaves us with ‘an opening of hands,’ released into our own ‘slice of day,’ where the world continues to know us and be known as endless possibility, poetency, revelation, and grace.” —from the review by Heather Winterer in Colorado Review, Summer 2006.