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On Certainty
Lyrical poems that tell the story of a nameless woman navigating a technological dystopia.
In the poems of On Certainty , an unnamed woman in a strangely familiar dystopia narrates a story of power and decline, where the Tyrant has gained ascendency and the Philosopher is dying. Here, the Tyrant rules over a decimated ecology filled with android deer, burnt towns, and exhausted individuals dependent on virtual reality augmentation. In choosing whether to take the Philosopher’s place in a struggle against the Tyrant, the narrator must consider how her decision may perpetuate the currently existing catastrophic systems.
Weaving together speculative fiction, philosophical aphorism, lyric fragment, and documentary technique, On Certainty echoes the contemporary world that can feel simultaneously quotidian and strange.
In the poems of On Certainty , an unnamed woman in a strangely familiar dystopia narrates a story of power and decline, where the Tyrant has gained ascendency and the Philosopher is dying. Here, the Tyrant rules over a decimated ecology filled with android deer, burnt towns, and exhausted individuals dependent on virtual reality augmentation. In choosing whether to take the Philosopher’s place in a struggle against the Tyrant, the narrator must consider how her decision may perpetuate the currently existing catastrophic systems.
Weaving together speculative fiction, philosophical aphorism, lyric fragment, and documentary technique, On Certainty echoes the contemporary world that can feel simultaneously quotidian and strange.
92 pages, Paperback
Published December 20, 2023
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March 28, 2025
I would like to propose “Mediation” as a subtitle for Kelsey’s book. A concept that is assuredly part of any study “on certainty.” Where even though “certainty” would likely register for people as a mental solidness or a soulful stability, it can also serve as a record of struggling with certainty. And in Kelsey’s usage, whose analogies can cast a wide berth, I would suggest to anyone reading: think of certainty as more than a state of mind. Like what is the mind doing when it compares people or natures or histories? Are there some comparisons that feel more certain than others?
Should an analogical figure be certain of its analogue? In general, I would say no. Because poems are adept with slipperiness and often use it to great advantage. The two extended analogies in this book, however, the figures of the Philosopher and the Tyrant, flirt with certainty. Like their participation in the narrative could readily link it to the real world. For instance, thinking of the Tyrant as Trump dates the book. Even if the Tyrant is clearly more effective than any of us think Trump is, but he is as craven as Trump. The Tyrant owns casinos, and is interested only in appearances. But his sense that everyone should be pleased to accept appearances alone feels like a sophisticated coercion to tyranny, and however uncanny Trump’s instinct for media might be (the book’s prescient telling of what happens when someone attempts to assassinate the Tryant is disturbingly accurate), I don’t think he would be capable of the extravagant science fiction world Kelsey’s book attributes to him.
And this is what I mean when I say Kelsey’s study “on” certainty positions me between a certain understanding and the process that goes into understanding. I’m not that great with Wittgenstein, but I feel his practice of prying language apart often yields a similar sensation (On Certainty is also a Wittgenstein title). Kelsey’s analogy of the Philosopher, however, is far more complicated. As the book opens, he’s been moved into an elder home, and the poet visits him regularly, showing great care and sympathy. In fact, her sentimental attachment is strong enough that I’m inclined to read an actual person onto this figure. Perhaps the poet would have paid this kind of attention to “David Bruce Kelsey (1945 - 2023)”, who the book is dedicated to. For more than half of the book I read the Philosopher as her father, given these coincidences. Not that I was certain of the connection, but I was inclined to it. And sorry if this spoils the book, but that inclination waned with each succeeding chapter. What felt like a warm, parental affection shifted to a warm respect. Like what you might pay an esteemed teacher. And then there were flashes of romance or romantic tensions. All of it scrambled the analogy I wanted to assign the Philosopher. Blurring a real-life analogue, like what happens with the Tyrant in Kelsey’s book. Which is like the tyrant in Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette, which Kelsey’s book draws a quote from in the end.
The book clarifies the position of the Philosopher in the end. But that clarification, for me, is only an illusion of certainty. Should I read this person as pure fiction? Is this unnamed person someone whose class Kelsey took in college? Or should I read this relationship as a tale describing Kelsey’s lifelong relationship with philosophy, what it’s meant to her writing. It’s a reading that explicitly bears itself out over the span of Kelsey’s work. This extended sense of analogy, its playfulness with certainty, it appears in other forms in the book. Consider the back and forth between nature and the anthropocene played out with the book’s running commentary on pesticides, what it means for human habitation of the planet. Or consider the recurring image of Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Deer #24. Should it be seen as more deer or a better mediated deer? It seems to me mediation is the filter for what she understands of the Philosopher, the Tyrant, or of nature. And, truth be told, that understanding is not complete.
And, ultimately, I would argue this is the book’s central premise: “certainty” relates to willingness. Engagement. A comfortable handle on what makes someone feel that what they perceive is deserving of their confidence and that leads to a concrete feeling about it. The brain flips the image recorded by the retina. So the world appears ‘right-side up.” Indicating that human vision is mediated. Similarly, the “first-person account” of Vesuvius is from Pliny the Younger. And yet it was only Pliney the Elder who visited the site.
Should an analogical figure be certain of its analogue? In general, I would say no. Because poems are adept with slipperiness and often use it to great advantage. The two extended analogies in this book, however, the figures of the Philosopher and the Tyrant, flirt with certainty. Like their participation in the narrative could readily link it to the real world. For instance, thinking of the Tyrant as Trump dates the book. Even if the Tyrant is clearly more effective than any of us think Trump is, but he is as craven as Trump. The Tyrant owns casinos, and is interested only in appearances. But his sense that everyone should be pleased to accept appearances alone feels like a sophisticated coercion to tyranny, and however uncanny Trump’s instinct for media might be (the book’s prescient telling of what happens when someone attempts to assassinate the Tryant is disturbingly accurate), I don’t think he would be capable of the extravagant science fiction world Kelsey’s book attributes to him.
And this is what I mean when I say Kelsey’s study “on” certainty positions me between a certain understanding and the process that goes into understanding. I’m not that great with Wittgenstein, but I feel his practice of prying language apart often yields a similar sensation (On Certainty is also a Wittgenstein title). Kelsey’s analogy of the Philosopher, however, is far more complicated. As the book opens, he’s been moved into an elder home, and the poet visits him regularly, showing great care and sympathy. In fact, her sentimental attachment is strong enough that I’m inclined to read an actual person onto this figure. Perhaps the poet would have paid this kind of attention to “David Bruce Kelsey (1945 - 2023)”, who the book is dedicated to. For more than half of the book I read the Philosopher as her father, given these coincidences. Not that I was certain of the connection, but I was inclined to it. And sorry if this spoils the book, but that inclination waned with each succeeding chapter. What felt like a warm, parental affection shifted to a warm respect. Like what you might pay an esteemed teacher. And then there were flashes of romance or romantic tensions. All of it scrambled the analogy I wanted to assign the Philosopher. Blurring a real-life analogue, like what happens with the Tyrant in Kelsey’s book. Which is like the tyrant in Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette, which Kelsey’s book draws a quote from in the end.
The book clarifies the position of the Philosopher in the end. But that clarification, for me, is only an illusion of certainty. Should I read this person as pure fiction? Is this unnamed person someone whose class Kelsey took in college? Or should I read this relationship as a tale describing Kelsey’s lifelong relationship with philosophy, what it’s meant to her writing. It’s a reading that explicitly bears itself out over the span of Kelsey’s work. This extended sense of analogy, its playfulness with certainty, it appears in other forms in the book. Consider the back and forth between nature and the anthropocene played out with the book’s running commentary on pesticides, what it means for human habitation of the planet. Or consider the recurring image of Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Deer #24. Should it be seen as more deer or a better mediated deer? It seems to me mediation is the filter for what she understands of the Philosopher, the Tyrant, or of nature. And, truth be told, that understanding is not complete.
And, ultimately, I would argue this is the book’s central premise: “certainty” relates to willingness. Engagement. A comfortable handle on what makes someone feel that what they perceive is deserving of their confidence and that leads to a concrete feeling about it. The brain flips the image recorded by the retina. So the world appears ‘right-side up.” Indicating that human vision is mediated. Similarly, the “first-person account” of Vesuvius is from Pliny the Younger. And yet it was only Pliney the Elder who visited the site.
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