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A Transparent Tree: Fictions
Each of the eleven long and short fictions in this book is a mystery of language branching from its imaginary root. Through different settings and events, Kelly explores the dimensions of a central theme -- how people act without knowing what is happening to them, how they move through the enigma of desire and intention while waiting for the world to decipher itself. Written with the clarity and palpably sensuous, carefully crafted style that has won awards for this poetry, this premier collection, which includes the famous novella "Cities," received an American Academy-Institute Award in 1985.
200 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1985
About the author
Robert Kelly
298 books33 followersKelly 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.
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.
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June 24, 2026
"Calf of Gold": 4 stars
- an eovcative introduction to a wide-ranging fictional collection— and clearly intended as a "statement of purpose" for Kelly, a poet releasing his first prose collection. That he messes with the historians mind through the allusions and bread crumbs, however, was only partially intended. STORY: boy in Hebrew camp off Sinai has vision of golden calf, which makes him leave camp and travel east (who is he?!)
"Cities": 3 stars
- we could label it “proper noun ecstaticism,” and it knows no one genre. it’s liable to be practiced by speculative and mimetic author alike, although it’s most easily indulged through a magic-realist blending of the two, such as PENDULUM- or BAUDOLINO-era Eco. Calvino, of course, comes to mind (and how can he not, considering the subject matter of this story, in which our peripatetic protagonist catalogs all the “hidden cities” his travels have uncovered) — and is duly name-checked in the few contemporary reviews of this collection you’ll find. dismiss those who cite calvino, however, for, apart from superficialities, he lacks the uppercaseness of true proper-noun ecstaticism.
if we must define it, we can say that PNE is a prose style that revels in trivial breadth, arcana, and the exotics of space (geography) and time (history). the aim is not so much coherence as it is abundance, and to overwhelm with the intoxicating voluptuousness of All human possibles and impossibles. practically, what this means is sentences overstuffed with stuff: people places things ideas events.
let’s consider a representative slice (from pg. 28): “The caravan would leave in two days to cover the brief last stage of its annual journey from Koko-nor (where I had joined it) to Irkutsk (where I hoped to catch a jet to Moscow). The caravan, by the way, was conducted by Hakka merchants, who brought salt and potash from Tibet and Sinkiang north to Siberia, but had, for untold generations, carried a variety of other supplies just for Ahampura: beat ghee, tea, lighter fluid, ceiling, wax, papers, and parchments, astrological ephemerides from Ladakh, and had received magical inscriptions, good council, pastoral care, and soapstone images of Vishnu, which they could market in the Buddhist North as statues of Maitreya, Buddha of the Coming Age.”
or this, from 32: “from peaceful Bunad of the prestidigitators, distinct for nothing but its obstinate sorcery, I went south to Grahar, Highland city of the so-called Leopard Men, through whose gates no white man had ever passed; I found it full of intelligent Bantus writing love lyrics and pastorals in several of their dozens of secret languages, and full too of fiery sons of those shy warblers, sons who read Bakunin and Engels in incomprehensible Swahili renderings from the last century, sons who hated their father’s mooning away and rallied around me to learn the latest news from Moscow. To group after group of them, I had to describe the October revolution and the assassination of the last Romanoff. I fled.”
proper-noun ecstaticism appeals, naturally, to poets, as it gives license to atomized lyricism and list-making and forgives their disinclination (dis-ability) to narrativize (and thus appeals especially a certain subset of songwriters; bob dylan has been afflicted for decades).
- an eovcative introduction to a wide-ranging fictional collection— and clearly intended as a "statement of purpose" for Kelly, a poet releasing his first prose collection. That he messes with the historians mind through the allusions and bread crumbs, however, was only partially intended. STORY: boy in Hebrew camp off Sinai has vision of golden calf, which makes him leave camp and travel east (who is he?!)
"Cities": 3 stars
- we could label it “proper noun ecstaticism,” and it knows no one genre. it’s liable to be practiced by speculative and mimetic author alike, although it’s most easily indulged through a magic-realist blending of the two, such as PENDULUM- or BAUDOLINO-era Eco. Calvino, of course, comes to mind (and how can he not, considering the subject matter of this story, in which our peripatetic protagonist catalogs all the “hidden cities” his travels have uncovered) — and is duly name-checked in the few contemporary reviews of this collection you’ll find. dismiss those who cite calvino, however, for, apart from superficialities, he lacks the uppercaseness of true proper-noun ecstaticism.
if we must define it, we can say that PNE is a prose style that revels in trivial breadth, arcana, and the exotics of space (geography) and time (history). the aim is not so much coherence as it is abundance, and to overwhelm with the intoxicating voluptuousness of All human possibles and impossibles. practically, what this means is sentences overstuffed with stuff: people places things ideas events.
let’s consider a representative slice (from pg. 28): “The caravan would leave in two days to cover the brief last stage of its annual journey from Koko-nor (where I had joined it) to Irkutsk (where I hoped to catch a jet to Moscow). The caravan, by the way, was conducted by Hakka merchants, who brought salt and potash from Tibet and Sinkiang north to Siberia, but had, for untold generations, carried a variety of other supplies just for Ahampura: beat ghee, tea, lighter fluid, ceiling, wax, papers, and parchments, astrological ephemerides from Ladakh, and had received magical inscriptions, good council, pastoral care, and soapstone images of Vishnu, which they could market in the Buddhist North as statues of Maitreya, Buddha of the Coming Age.”
or this, from 32: “from peaceful Bunad of the prestidigitators, distinct for nothing but its obstinate sorcery, I went south to Grahar, Highland city of the so-called Leopard Men, through whose gates no white man had ever passed; I found it full of intelligent Bantus writing love lyrics and pastorals in several of their dozens of secret languages, and full too of fiery sons of those shy warblers, sons who read Bakunin and Engels in incomprehensible Swahili renderings from the last century, sons who hated their father’s mooning away and rallied around me to learn the latest news from Moscow. To group after group of them, I had to describe the October revolution and the assassination of the last Romanoff. I fled.”
proper-noun ecstaticism appeals, naturally, to poets, as it gives license to atomized lyricism and list-making and forgives their disinclination (dis-ability) to narrativize (and thus appeals especially a certain subset of songwriters; bob dylan has been afflicted for decades).
Displaying 1 of 1 review