Author Description

From Booklist In more than 35 collections of poetry, Kelly has utterly failed at one thing: to pigeonhole himself into predictability. This rich selection from more than a quarter-century of work contains imagistic bits that seem like fragments of poetic tapestry, long surreal narratives, series poems, and sonorous chants. Whatever the form, they are marked by Kelly's erudition, which covers Greek archaeology as readily as twentieth-century music, Sumerian gods as well as contemporary painting. Yet his work is never merely academic, inspired as it is by a passionate intellect reminiscent of Wallace Stevens. This survey may draw him more of the readers he well deserves. Patricia Monaghan