Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary (Sawtooth Poetry Prize Series 2005) [Paperback]

Karla Kelsey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2006

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Karla Kelsey was born and raised in Southern California. With degrees from UCLA, the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and the University of Denver, she teaches at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She lives with her husband Peter on the banks of the river. Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary is her first book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 106 pages
• Publisher: Ahsahta Press; 1 edition (January 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0916272877
• ISBN-13: 978-0916272876
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 6.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,610,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant and beautiful, May 8, 2010

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A Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary (Sawtooth Poetry Prize Series 2005) (Paperback)

Karla Kelsey's debut volume is both deeply intelligent and extremely beautiful, blending the abstract and the concrete in new ways. Her rigorous philosophical background girds the lyric imagery and movement, making for a reading pleasure that engages both the brain and the senses. Highly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars To Construct Knowledge, September 22, 2011

By 

Kent Shaw (Huntington, WV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary (Sawtooth Poetry Prize Series 2005) (Paperback)

Kelsey leads off Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary with a quote from Plato, though, for the popular imagination, I imagine a quote from Locke would have spelled out the main concept driving this book. We are the accumulation of impressions we collect over the course of our lives. In the pop culture version of Locke, we are a tabula rasa, blank at the beginning of our lives, void of knowledge, and it is only through experience that we shape our identity. And while this might come across as a simplistic rendering of the book, I mention it because, in recommending this book to the largest possible readership, I find it a helpful place to start.

I believe it's where Kelsey starts. The first four longer poems are titled, "Aperture." And each of the poems presents a series of quickened impressions. For me, the sharpened specificity makes me think of Sally Keith's Design, where I am constantly struck by Keith's ability to stop the entire world long enough and long enough that she gets every single point into the poem. Kelsey's point might not be comprehension of one single moment of time, but rather a population of moments. And they all collect inside the speaker. And they become felt and sensual as she handles them, as she possesses them. This is where having the Locke as a reference can be helpful, because the popular understanding of his theory doesn't describe the reality of being a self constructed by impressions. A tabula rasa that has been written on by experience points only to a conceptual perspective of identity.

And when was an identity ever unfeeling? Which returns me to Kelsey's use of Plato as her epigraph. It is fitting to think of each impression as a bird, and to think of our desire to remember as holding a bird inside an aviary--an aviary or a mind. What I find most rewarding in Kelsey's collection is how this accumulation of places and things is concrete, and how the book uses the full span of its arc to contemplate what a self-aware life feels like. A musculature connected to everything.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars mostly asterisks, May 21, 2009

By 

Right Reader (Utah, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary (Sawtooth Poetry Prize Series 2005) (Paperback)

the work in this book is an example of why poetry is marginal and going to remain that way. Kelsey is more interested in white space than in language, which means that not only the pages but the poems themselves are empty. I tried reading the poems aloud to see if that gave them any more substance, to see if there was something compelling about the actual sounds that silent reading didn't evoke, but unfortunately, there's not much music to found in these poems. There are, however, many, many asterisks--the book is littered with them. And like the lines of letters and words Kelsey arranges, they're symbols of lack you really just skip over. Skip the book too.