Bestiary: Poems

by Donika Kelly

Across this remarkable first book are encounters with animals, legendary beasts, and mythological monsters--half human and half something else. Donika Kelly's Bestiary is a catalogue of creatures--from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel, from "Out West" to "Back East." Lurking in the middle of this powerful and multifaceted collection is a wrenching sequence that wonders just who or what is the real monster inside this life of survival and reflection. Selected and with an introduction by the National Book Award winner Nikky Finney, Bestiary questions what makes us human, what makes us whole.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Mythology, Adult, Womens, African American

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2016

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gorgeous book of poems. The love poems, in particular, are striking with unexpected ideas and imagery coalescing into poetry about this thing called love. Also threads of fathers who mistake daughters for lovers and mothers who disappear and black girlhood. This one, I savored.

[Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful meditation on personhood, nature, the body, love, and mythology. She is playful but always with a layer of sincerity and admiration for her subjects, whether it’s a mythical creature, a bird, or herself. Gorgeously written, these poems are best read aloud to feel the words in your mouth, to hear them spoken.

[Monet · Rating 5 out of 5]

“But who will listen to the song of a nutbrown hen?” Me. I will listen. This collection was a journey, a kind of odyssey and we are lucky to be allowed to follow. I’ll be coming back to these poems forever.

[S. Zainab Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bestiary is a swift and gorgeous collection of poems. It's magical and painfully intimate. I'm still lingering in its atmosphere. This is a perfect autumn read--something to take into the woods.

[Tyler Goodson · Rating 5 out of 5]

BESTIARY is a catalog of what's inside us, of what breaks us, and what puts us back together. In the process, the book breaks you, then fixes you. Kelly is not afraid of the dark, or of loneliness, and the magic of this book is she somehow makes you less afraid, too.

[Michal Tallo · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best and most powerful debut collections I've read in a very long time.

"You speak in therapy. Every statement begins,
I feel-, even when you mean, why are you hurting me?
You'd rather be a simpler animal."

[Erzulimojo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the poet's use of animals, real and imaginary, to plumb her emotions, explore identity, and make sense of her experiences.

[l · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The feeling of not being enough or not mattering animates large parts of the book. If I couldn’t be loved as a person, perhaps I wasn’t a person. Perhaps I was some other kind of animal, something lower in the order of things." :(

[Emily Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

These hearts kept me in good company.

[Charity Rau · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn’t really a book of poems about creatures, like the synopsis leads you to believe, but rather a book of typical poems lamenting hardships and trials of life. Some people may enjoy this book, but it just wasn’t for me. I was expecting something else, so I think that’s partly why I didn’t really enjoy it. It was also a bit too much on the depressing side.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many feelings!

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

simply perfect. i read this outside on the deck and i brought it with me to jesse’s apartment before charli night at the dolphin and i spilled half a mikes on it so when i was reading the second half of it it was soggy and smelled like lemonade. and it was so beautiful and it was my favorite collection of poems i have read in a while. just wow. she attended the Adrienne rich school of lesbian love poems for sure. i love the different mythological beasts and the way that each one had its own poem, how different all the love poems were, and then that poem at the end that was just love poem, when we actually see the lovers together, transcending and moving through the identities. i loved this so much. i must read more donika kelly immediately

[Raya · Rating 4 out of 5]

TW - sex, abuse, trauma
"The louvered windows. The peach
walls. The buckling ceiling that needs
repair. The gusset of your panties
soaked with your father’s semen.
Why you no longer wear panties.
Why he deserves every arc of your boot.
Why the door is always locked."

It's too good to be a debut.
The book is a marvelous collection of densely packed poems, each so unique and universal. A work worth diving in if you are partial towards dark and witchy feminist poetry. Something both disconcerting as well as stimulating *grunts in poetic fever*

[Maude Genter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolument remarquable, ça faisait longtemps que de la poésie m'avait autant conquise.
L'Autrice s'inspire de son vécu de personne noire, lesbienne et victime d'inceste et y insuffle des créatures mythiques tels que des griffons et des centaures. La forme et le fond sont en symbioses et chaque mot, chaque phrase semblent essentiels.

[Sylva · Rating 5 out of 5]

epesní.

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5*

[Susanna]

Tõmbu kägarasse looteks ussiks
kuni meenutad kortsus paberit. Kokku
volditud jäsemed, liigesevalu.
Oled sellise valu jaoks liiga noor. Sa
ei tee enam müravatele koertele ruumi.
Oma poistele. On talv. Koonerdad
soojusega.

[Grittel · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3

[G Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in two sitting over one day -- basically the perfect Saturday. First, I read each poem straight through and dog-eared the pages of poems I wanted to revisit. Then, I went back and reread (usually more than once) those I'd marked. It's how I usually read shorter books of poetry. Sometimes longer ones, too.

Kelly's voice is so strong. As you read, you piece together a part of her own story, and it's increasingly shocking. Some of the poems I initially found too abstract, but I am going back over them now with my Merriam-Webster app open. Super helpful for some -- especially their titles. Not as helpful for others.

Still, I loved this book and will read more by Donika Kelly in the future.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5; an overall weak collection, both in form and function. One standout, though:


“When he opens her chest, separates the flat skin
of one breast from the other, breaks the hinge of ribs,
and begins, slowly, to evacuate her organs, she is silent.

He hollows her like a gourd, places her heart
below her lungs, scrapes the ribs clean of fat
and gristle with his thick fingers. He saysNow you are ready.

and climbs inside. But she is not ready for the dry bulk
of his body curled inside her own. She is not ready to exhale his breath, cannot bear both him and herself,

but he says, Carry me, and she carries him beneath her
knitted ribs, her hard breads. He is the heart now,
the lungs and stomach that she cannot live without.”

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really magnificent and--yes, I think I'll say it--masterful debut collection that I can't believe I'm just getting to now. I loved how these poems explore the tension between being a rock and being an open door; a tension I often feel in life. I especially admire the artistry with which the poems deal with abuse, with recovery from abuse. The poems do not excavate these wounds, bringing us into a hot and closed confessional booth of sensational details. Instead, the poems emerge from the wounds like birds, like beasts, like mythical creatures strange and powerful and bearing their names in their teeth.

[hope h. · Rating 5 out of 5]

love poem: satyr

i have filed my horns and trimmed my beard
and warmed my throat into a fine and sober
warble. i play a little song in the key

of your name. i call to you with a breath
of spring, a small wind warmed in my breast
and shaped by the lips you loved. love, i see

you've closed the window to your heart.
closed, too, the door, and blacked the light.
i put my ear to the glass, to the wood. i hear

your heart like the wind in the reeds,
meting out my name.

[also: little box, out west, catalogue, how to be alone, and commandments.]

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved everything about this. Donika Kelly knows her craft. These poems are so skillful and beautiful and chimerical. There are poems about nature, about her own (often painful) childhood, and about mythological beings, and somehow it all works perfectly together. There aren't enough stars.

TW for sexual abuse

[South Buncombe Library]

Recommended for readers wanting to freshen their morning routines with emotional poetry. -Sarah

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is everything I love about poetry. Beautiful use of language, lovely turns and repetitions, deeply conveyed, layered meanings... Wonderful.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites: Catalogue, Love Poem: Pegasus, Tender, Love Poem

[Camila · Rating 4 out of 5]

i loved this collection so much. reading it at the same time as ovid's metamorphoses also made me aware of the ways that kelly retold the stories of the creatures in that epic.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poetry collection is magnetic.

I went in wondering whether it would be dealing with anthropomorphism or zoomorphism, when actually I think that it resists any sort of distinction between the two by blurring the lines. The transformations seen in the Love Poems can be read as both an undoing or a liberation. If we see ourselves as myth, or as creature, or as something different to human, are we escaping ourselves or are we transcending ourselves? What if it's both? What if it's neither and we're actually trying to root ourselves in our own present?

I really enjoy poetry that not only moves me, but also makes me ask questions that sort of have no true answer, especially if those questions are things that I have thought about. This was a brilliant tapestry of love and grief.

[Heather Hasselle · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels insane to try to rate and review poetry. It's hard to distinguish between how much I liked it vs how "good" I thought it was (the latter very much so). I "liked" its rhythm and weaving of nature into emotions into memories, etc. I was also impressed by its cohesiveness and how different the experience was when I read poems at random vs in order; the intentional arrangment of each poem worked well and powerfully. Though, some of its content matter (predatory father) made me hurt/cringe in a way that made me "like" it less, though her ability to make me feel this way solidfies how "good" I think they are, Kelly is, at evoking a range of visceral feelings. So that's my review, if that makes any sense.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although there were beautiful, lyrical spaces in this collection, a majority of the poems reached for something it couldn’t quite grasp.

I felt the poems had a soul (beautiful and strange), but the meaning in which they exist lacked. Which poetry/ art doesn’t always require a meaning, but for this collection the lack of their essence stood out to me. I think this is due to them quite clearly trying to have meaning— there was a truth behind the words, but it had no substance, just pretty flowing words making up a scene that held no true meaning.

I do think I would have enjoyed this collection more if I were taken back to my younger self. There was an air of melancholy and bitterness beneath the words which I would have resonated more with 5+ years ago.

I will say there were some truly beautifully composed pieces in this collection. Overall, 3 stars 🌟