The Orchard

by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Overview

Richly allusive, the poems in Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s The Orchard evoke elements of myth in distinctive aural and rhythmic patterns. Her poetic strength lies in her ability to cast poems as modern myths and allegories. Propelled by patterned repetitions and lush cadences, the poems move the reader through a landscape where waking and dream consciousness fuse.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly teaches creative writing at the Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her poetry collections are Song (BOA Editions), the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Award, and To the Place of Trumpets, selected by James Merrill for the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781929918485
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	04/01/2004
Series:	American Poets Continuum , #82
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Brigit Pegeen Kelly has published three books of poetry, To the Place of Trumpets (Yale UniversityPress, 1988), selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, Song (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1995), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and, The Orchard a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Additional awards and honors include a "Discovery" / The Nation award, the Witter Bynner Prize from the Academy of Arts and Letters, the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council. In 2008, Brigit Pegeen Kelly was awarded the 2008 Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines, including The Nation, The Yale Review, New England Review, Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, five Pushcart Prize volumes, and six volumes of The Best American Poetry. Kelly, who has taught for many years primarily at the Universityof Illinois, has also taught at the Universityof California at Irvine, Purdue University, Warren Wilson College, and numerous writers' conferences. In 2002 the Universityof Illinois awarded her both humanities and campus-wide awards for excellence in teaching.

Table of Contents

I
	Black Swan	11
	Blessed Is the Field	13
	The Garden of the Trumpet Tree	15
	Blacklegs	17
	The Wolf	19
	Brightness from the North	20
	Sheep Child	22
	The South Gate	24
	Sheet Music	25
II
	The Satyr's Heart	29
	Two Boys	30
	Rose of Sharon	32
	Windfall	33
	Midwinter	35
	Elegy	37
	Pale Rider	39
	Masque	43
III
	The Dragon	47
	The Foreskin	48
	The Orchard	49
	Plants Fed On by Fawns	53
	Lion	55
	The Dance	57
	The Rain's Consort	60
IV
	The Sparrow's Gate	65
	Acknowledgments	73
	About the Author	75
	Colophon	80

Editorial Reviews

For Kelly, fertility and loyalty are inseparable from predation and death, as when ''the dead sparrow's / Brother sticks its head in the mouth of the lion.'' At times the whole book seems to mourn, and to gain its power by mourning, the same dead child: relentless lines pray and shout, demanding answers, but find ''waterstained stone cupids'' and ''the black black earth'' instead.
— The New York Times

Stephen Burt