Bestiary: Poems

Bryn says: Bestiary confronts our human capacity to be monstrous, but affirms that the monsters of our past can be conquered. Through this collection, Kelly catalogs what breaks us and what puts us back together again with a magical mix of the personal and the mythological. At the end, she presents us with the hope of "a clear sky, your hand in mind. A handful of sky." I cried.

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.