Render

by Collin Kelley

The poems in Render are snapshots of a family in crisis, infidelity, sexual discovery, and 40 years of pop culture from a gay poet growing up in the American South. Vanessa Daou says, "In Kelley's elegiac, soaring series of poems, we are seduced by his language, invited to join him on his raw and ribald traipsing across the wilderness of his memory. What is rendered is as intimate yet as exposed as your neighbor's lingerie strung up on a clothesline."

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2013

About the author

Collin Kelley is the author of Wonder & Wreckage: New & Selected Poems, 1993-2023 (Poetry Atlanta Press). His other collections include Midnight in a Perfect World (Sibling Rivalry Press), Better To Travel (Poetry Atlanta Press), Slow To Burn (Seven Kitchens Press), After the Poison (Finishing Line Press) and Render (Sibling Rivalry Press), chosen by the American Library Association for its 2014 Over the Rainbow Book List. Kelley is also the author of The Venus Trilogy of novels – Conquering Venus, Remain In Light and Leaving Paris – also published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Remain In Light was the runner-up for the 2013 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Fiction and a 2012 finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction. He is also the author of the short story collection, Kiss Shot (Amazon Kindle Exclusive). Kelley’s poetry, reviews, essays and interviews have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies around the world.

Reviews

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced with this book from my English professor. He hosts radio shows and had interviewed Collin Kelley in the past. As an assignment,we were given poetry books from the professor's personal collection, and we had to choose a poem, analyze, and explain how it relates to us. After reading this book and finishing the assignment, I was in awe. I told my professor that I wanted to keep it for myself. From beginning to end, Collin Kelley pulls you in and knocks you in the face with his bold words. Damn near anything raw and raunchy would be a guilty pleasure of mine, so Render definitely did not disappoint.

[willowdog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chronologically presented through 40 years, remembered/imagined narrative snapshot poems,some with "pop" references, capture episodes of growing up gay and observing relationships within family. Favorite

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kelley’s work so completely captures time and place for me, and only partly because we share so many points of reference (Sally Mann, Dangerous Liaisons, and Spencer’s, just to make a few). I have such admiration for how effortlessness these poems appear, though I realize they’re anything but.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collin is such a skilled poet and this collection does not disappoint.

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collin Kelley’s latest collection, Render, is a masterful stroke of both political and socially relevant poems, where the poet uses his own life as a pop-culture touchstone for his generation’s most meaningful, shared experiences. Among the plethora of significant events hit upon in this book are: First love, parents, infidelity, nostalgia, the movies, sexual icons of puberty, post-puberty, and the inherent confusion which lies within. And while I would say most people will find something to love within these pages, this book speaks directly to anyone who is part of the generation born between the late 1960’s up through 1974. One poem after another breaks through the barrier of fuzzy memory and brings the reader immediately into the world of the poet. Each poem strengthens its grip upon the reader and will not let go. These poems will stay with you long after you have finished the book.

Collin Kelley is a genius when it comes to confession. He teases you with brilliant titles and amazing opening lines. Once he has you hooked, he delivers sucker punches and body blows like a prize fighter. What is amazing is even after you are dumbstruck by a series of poems, your first instinct will be to read another poem, and another.

Using the disillusion (and seeming dissolution) of the American Family, Collin Kelly presents a world so many of us from his generation know all too well. We are the Post Atomic Age children, born of parents who participated or did not participate in the counter-culture of the 1960’s. We are the first artificial, non-organic generation, and Kelley drives that point home by exposing the hidden narrative of his own family in some strange quiet crisis.

It’s difficult for me to choose any one poem to demonstrate the building of this narrative. I can tell you there are no weak poems here, no filler. Each and every poem is essential and I cannot imagine the book any other way than how Collin has constructed it. Each poem captures with exacting precision not only the poet’s memory, the thing he must share, but the details of the world at large, making each accessible in the best way possible. I do not mean accessible as in simple, because there will never be anything simple about Collin’s poetry. No, accessible in the way everyone can relate to the stories he tells, because we all have memories tied to the events Collin ties his memories to.

When Collin talks about his summer at the movies while his mother is having an affair, I immediately remember my adolescent movie experiences, but also the dysfunction of my own parents’ marriage. When he talks about the Bicentennial in his poem, “Freedom Train,” it’s his details which jar a thousand memories loose from my past, causing me to wonder why I have lost so many. When Collin talks about his early sexual encounters, especially with those boys who feel shame for their behavior, I am reminded of my own fumbled experiences early in my adolescence.

Collin Kelley succeeds with his poems because he is willing to face the truth of his past, confront the seeds which were sewn, resulting in the person he is today. He succeeds because he does this when so many of us are too afraid to do these things for ourselves. But even more so, Render is a tremendous book because it does not condemn in its confession. It lays out the reality of the world without trying to make anyone feel guilty for their past. It allows us to take from it and only wants us to share.

[Erica Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the longest section of this book, "aperture," Kelley captures the paranoia of adolescence. The poems encompass world events, pop culture, and personal history with seeming ease. A poem about Three Mile Island is followed by one that charts a mother's obsession with her CB radio: "We let the devil in that day, / antenna rising like a white flag / over boondock house." But there is no truce to be had. The mother's absence not her presence propels this unrelenting collection forward.