The Natural Order of Things

In her dazzling latest, Kelly (The Renunciations) celebrates the endurance of life, love, and art, examining the porous boundaries between all living things. In a series of poems titled “The Bone Museum,” the speaker considers the ethics of creation, display, and preservation, a subject that reverberates throughout the collection. “In the beginning” channels the rapture of erotic promise in new love, and liberation through queer intimacy: “In the beginning, there was your mouth,/ a sky full of stars, raked or raking, clock-// wise or west, and in the close or mammoth/ matter, my heart’s red muscle knocked and knocked.” Throughout, Kelly also reflects on her family history, in particular the lives of her relatives who lived or live still in the farmlands of Arkansas. These moving poems explore the tradition of storytelling while posing difficult questions about the experience of displacement, especially when the location of one’s childhood home makes visiting unsafe: “For years now,/ I have been an only child: my brother and sister,/ their beautiful children, alive in the South—/ to which I can never return.” With remarkable skill and depth, Kelly poses penetrating questions about memory and memorializing, self-reinvention, and finding liberation in a world that is increasingly hostile to the concept. It’s an unforgettable addition to a fantastic poet’s oeuvre. (Oct.)