Flesh Dream Book

by Robert Kelly

Book by Kelly, Robert

181 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Kelly has published more than fifty books of poetry and prose, including Red Actions: Selected Poems 1960-1993 (1995) and a collection of short fictions, A Transparent Tree (1985). Many were published by the Black Sparrow Press. He also edited the anthology A Controversy of Poets (1965).Kelly was of great help to the Hungryalist group of poets of India during the trial of Malay Roychoudhury,with whom he had correspondence,now archived at Kolkata.

Kelly received the Los Angeles Times First Annual Book Award (1980) for Kill the Messenger Who Brings Bad News and the American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation (1991) for In Time.

Reviews

[James Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Kelly has written a bad book I haven't read it yet. In "Finding the Measure" (in the book of the same name) Kelly wrote "Style is death". It took me a minute to understand that he was saying that style, in the sense of a static voice, kills poetry. That's why Kelly is so hard to pin down. He is, for the most part, creating the art of poetry anew each time he puts his pen to paper. I've gotten a lot, also, out of his idea (borrowed from Corbin's writings on Sufi mystics) of the T'awil of the first line, that is, the poem as an exegesis of its own first line. Reading Kelly with that concept in mind, one sees the unscrolling of his imagery as a map of consciousness. You see him following where the poem leads. If one knew, as one was writing it, how a poem was to end, then why would you need to write the poem? That is one important thing I've learned from Kelly and I think it makes me a better writer, and I think it makes him one of our greatest poets.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please see my review of Robert Kelly's The Convections. Flesh:Dream:Book is a magnificent accomplishment, one of my three favorites of Kelly.