Kelsey, Karla: A Conjoined Book: Aftermath and Become Tree, Become Bird

Omnidawn, 2014 Karla Kelsey is a master of molding the lyric to her own explorations, which in the case of this collection, her third, include questions of mind and book, weather and landscape. Kelsey offers up two sections that "conjoin" at the hip—not in their narrative state or in their speaker, but rather in the images of land and water that twine themselves together to create shifting landscapes and associations. The page takes on its own importance, as poems play with margin and lineation, bringing to life the shifting horizons captured in the text itself. Through all of this, the poems delight in pairings that bring new sight to forest and river: "the constancy of blossom & fall," "aspen & window-split light," "the path drawn towards oscillation & char." This book will echo in you and keep echoing. —Abi Pollokoff * * * From the first poem (unnamed):   I awake mid- thought & feeling   the bed sheets taut I lily over-   rained & burgeoning. This season   of me