Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary

by Karla Kelsey

Poetry. This book, winner of the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, takes flight from Plato's Theaetetus, in which Socrates tells us that the mind works as an aviary--particles of knowledge fly around like birds, and the thinker plucks them down to use when he or she sees fit. The bird becomes a metaphor for the action of the mind folding and unfolding into explosions and navigational patterns of flight. Lyrical and thought-provoking, it is a masterful debut. "Kelsey writes what it is to know, of 'what we become/ when the universe is seen in lights of its generation.' We are, in this work, in the midst of things, and as Plato's Socrates has it, 'the eye becomes filled with vision and now sees, and becomes, not vision but a seeing eye.'"--Carolyn Forche.

Genres: Poetry

106 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Open Loop Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karla Kelsey’s well-polished poetic objects remind one of sculpture, of solid materials worked and reworked until they acquire, by the sculptor’s hands, freedom of movement in the face of restraint, bounded energy, artful repose.

daily begun from.
The blue paper crane
hangs in the tree,
arc of thrust and drag. You
left plumed. You
arrived telling of golden sands
and a golden sea, sidereal navigation
bringing the bird home
over bright blooms
of fire, explosion


Her poems are literally shaped by punctuation. Stanzas are broken by asterisks; a cacophony of backslashes populates a single line; images reach toward other images from the far edge of a page. In this way Kelsey bestows on her readers one of poetry’s greatest gifts: the space for contemplation. 

Gone to the window, light there wood-glossy and in non-repose

	*

As in pick up the seeds and throw them into the street

	*

As in 1 color, gone gold and so seeing, all blurred around the edges and walking


A reader’s journey through her first book, Knowledge Forms The Aviary, is like a twilit walk through a walled garden rich with juxtaposition; everyday objects keep company with blooming botanicals, birds alight on the branches of trees. Inspired by Plato’s image of the mind at work, an aviary populated by diverse and divergent species of birds, his symbols of knowledge, Kelsey invites her reader to examine contemporary experience through the optics of the past. An eighteenth century gardener’s dictionary becomes a touchstone for descriptions of flora; an epic Romantic poem teaches the value of scientific language. These elements and others work together to make poetry that is smooth, seamless, whose beautiful moments are path through today’s crashing babel. 

Patterns on the siding,
	amber waves of
decibels to perform the particles

a waking	as if we slept,
here, the street going on before

as the street
	goes on
			in moments
of reverberation


Now, in her new work, Iteration Nets, a contemporary take on the sonnet form, forthcoming from Ahsahta Press, Kelsey curates an exhibit of sound sculptures, their strict, formal framework a structure for musical language buttressed by rhyme scheme and rhythm. The first section, comprised strictly of sonnets, is “exploded out” in the second into related prose poems that are, in the third, erased to lyrical fragments. In this way Karla Kelsey illustrates the transitory nature of meaning, reminding us that understanding is mutable, and art full of possibility.

Carlin M. Wragg, Editor
Open Loop Press

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit that I read this aloud, quickly, in an afternoon, and most of it just washed over me as beautiful, interesting language with occasional moments of clarity of thought or feeling or image. I felt like I was in this mind-aviary and things were just flying around above me and sometimes I'd get a glimpse of something graspable. Which was nice. And upon looking more closely at a few pages it is a relief to notice there is so much going on here, that it does hold up and make more sense with scrutiny, even if parts remain opaque. Worth going back to.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

The strength in this book really rises out of the epigraph from Plato's Theaetetus, in the proposition of birds as ideas, or creatures that would come to roost in the mind. Kelsey follows it with such strong birds, like wind, or pennants, that populate the book. What is most interesting to me is how language weights the book down, and how it seems that it is Kelsey's intention to show that language does act as burden to our ideas.

[Andy Stallings · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book first a few years ago as a catalog of formal possibilities and a sort of abstract sensation compilation. I read it again just now and found it far richer even than I had found it previously. There's nothing I don't love about it. Really looking forward to getting a copy of her new book in my hands.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

For obvious reasons

[hh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of language but nothing that i could hang onto.