Robert
Kelly [USA]
1935
Born
and raised in Brooklyn, Robert Kelly entered the City College of New York at
the age of fifteen, and became a graduate student in medieval studies at
Columbia University at nineteen. Since 1962 Kelly has been a professor at Bard
College, offering him a stability of life that has allowed the production of
numerous books of poetry, fiction, and essays.
Kelly began writing in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, associating himself with a circle of poets that included Paul
Blackburn, David Antin, Jerome Rothenberg, Armand Schwerner, George Economou,
Diane Wakoski, and Clayton Eshleman. For a brief period Kelly and Rothenberg,
in particular, were associated with was described as poetry of the “deep
image.” In the early 1960s Kelly edited two short-lived magazines, Trobar
and Matter, which brought him further attention and associated his work
with the free-verse poetry of the tradition of Charles Olson, Robert Duncan,
and Louis Zukofsky.
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From 1967 to 1973, he was associate editor
of Caterpillar, where he featured contemporaries such as Gerrit Lansing
and Kenneth Irby as well as introducing younger poets such as Thomas Meyer,
Richard Grossinger, and Charles Stein.
Kelly’s first book was Armed Descent
of 1961, and over that decade he went on to publish 19 volumes of new poetry.
In the years since, he has continued to produce numerous volumes of poetry and
10 books of fiction. He has received a number of major awards, including the
Award for Distinction from the National Academy and Institute of Arts and
Letters in 1986 and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Armed
Descent (New
York: Hawk’s Well Press, 1961); Her Body Against Time (Mexico
City: Ediciones El Corno Emplumado, 1963); Round Dances (New
York: Trobar Press, 1964); Enstasy (Annadale-on-Hudson, New
York: Matter, 1964); Lunes/Sightings [with Jerome Rothenberg]
(New York: Hawk’s Well Press, 1964); Words in Service (New
Haven, Connecticut: Robert Lamerton, 1966); Weeks (Mexico
City: Ediciones El Corno Emplumado, 1966); Song XXIV (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Pym-Randall Press, 1966); Devotions (Annadale-on-Hudson,
New York: Salitter, 1967); Crooked Bridge Love Society (Annadale-on-Hudson,
New York: Salitter, 1967); A Joining: A Sequence for H.D. (Los
Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1967); Alpha (Gambier, Ohio: The
Pot Hanger Press, 1967); Finding the Measure (Los Angeles:
Black Sparrow Press, 1968); Sonnets (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow
Press, 1968); Songs I-XXX (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Pym-Randall Press, 1968); The Common Shore (Books 1-5) (Los
Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1969); A California Journal (London:
Big Venus Books, 1969); Kali Yuga (London: Jonathan Cape,
1970); Flesh Dream Book (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press,
1971); Ralegh (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1972); The
Pastorals (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1972); Reading
Her Notes (Uniondale, New York: privately printed at the Salisbury
Press, 1972); The Tears of Edmund Burke (Annandale-on-Hudson,
privately printed, 1973); The Mill of Particulars (Los
Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1973); The Loom (Los Angeles:
Black Sparrow Press, 1975); Sixteen Odes (Los Angeles: Black
Sparrow Press, 1976); The Lady Of (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow
Press, 1977); The Convections (Santa Barbara, California:
Black Sparrow Press, 1977); The Book of Persephone (New Paltz,
New York: Treacle Press, 1978); Kill the Messenger (Santa
Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1979); Sentence (Barrytown, New
York: Station Hill Press, 1980); Spiritual Exercises (Santa
Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1981); The Alchemist to Mercury: An
Alternate Opus [uncollected poems 1960-1980, ed. by Jed Rasula]
(Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1981); Mulberry Women [art
by Matt Phillips] (Berkeley, California: Hiersoux, Powers, Thomas, 1982); Under
Words (Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1983); Thor’s
Thrush (Oakland, California: The Coincidence Press, 1984); Not
This Island Music (Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press,
1987); The Flowers of Unceasing Coincidence (Barrytown, New
York: Station Hill Press, 1988); Oahu (Rhinebeck, New York: St
Lazaire Press, 1988); Ariadne (Rhinebeck, New York: St Lazaire
Press, 1991); Manifesto for the Next New York School (Buffalo:
Leave Press, 1991); A Strange Market: Poems 1985-1988 (Santa
Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1992); Mont Blanc (a
long poem inscribed within Shelleys) (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Otherwind Press,
1994); Red Actions: Selected Poems 1960-1993 (Santa Rosa,
California: Black Sparrow Press, 1995); The Time of Voice: Poems
1994-1996 (Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1998); Runes (Ann
Arbor, Michigan: Otherwind Press, 1999); The Garden of Distances [with
Brigitte Mahlknecht] (Vienna/Lana: Editions Procura, 1999); Unquell the
Dawn Now (a collaboration with Friedrich Holderlin Schuldt) (Kingston,
New York: McPherson & Co., 1999); Lapis (Black Sparrow
Press. 2005); Shame = Scham (a collaboration with Birgit
Kempker) (McPherson, 2005); Samphire (Backwoods Broadsides
Chaplet Series Nº 97, 2006); Threads (First Intensity Press,
2006); May Day (Parsifal Editions, 2006); SAINTE–TERRE
or The White Stone (Woodstock: Shivastan Publishing, 2006); Fire
Exit (Boston: Black Widow Press, 2009); Uncertainties (Barrytown:
Station Hill Press, 2011); Winter Music (with Susan Quasha)
(Barrytown: 'T'Space with Station Hill Press, 2014); The Color Mill (with
Nathlie Provosty) (New York: Spuyten Duyvil, 2014); The Language of Eden (Metambesen,
2014); Answer the Light (with Sherry Williams) (Metambesen,
2014); Claws (with Barbara Leon) (Metambesen, 2014); A
Break in the Weather (Metambesen, 2014); Seven Fairy Tales (Metambesen,
2015); Steps (Metambesen, 2015); I Tarocchi Nuovi (Metambesen,
2015); An Advent Calendar (Hudson, New York: The Doris/Books,
2015); Opening the Seals (New York: Autonomedia, 2016); Heart
Thread (Hudson, New York: Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2016); Certainties (The
Maxims of Martin Traubenritter) (Metambesen, 2016); The Hexagon (Boston:
Black Widow Press, 2016); The Secret Name of Now (New York,
Rio de Janeiro, Paris: Dr. Cicero, 2016); Concealed in Brightness (with
Charlotte Mandell) (Metambesen, 2018); The Caprices (Hudson,
New York: Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2018; Calls (Hudson,
New York: Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2018); The Cloudherding Book (with
Charlotte Mandell) (Metambesen, 2019); Ten New Fairy Tales (illustrated
by Emma Polyakov) (Kingston, New York: McPherson & Co., 2019); Seaspel (Hudson,
New York: Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2019); Reasons to Resist (Hudson,
New York: Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2020); The Reader (Metambesen,
2020); The Questing (Metambesen, 2020); Doors / Türen (selected
and translated into German by Urs Engeler) (Metambesen, 2020); Leaflight
(with Charlotte Mandell) (Metambesen, 2020)
╬Winner
of the PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English
2005-2006
Jesus
Speaks to the Wandering Jew
1.
You’re
the only one who understood.
We
are travelers, that’s all.
Our
best instruction is: to be gone.
Shake
off the dust of the town.
We
leave each other constantly.
No
temple, no sacred mountain,
archive,
museum, Vatican. Just
people
trying to think their way out.
2.
I
said: Wander till I come
find
you again. But I will never come
back.
Always only ahead.
You
are the only one who knew me,
knew
where I was to e found, never, forever,
nowhere,
and found me there,
mist
in the trees and surf pounding at night
but
no ocean by morning.
I
climbed a tree
and
you hurried to join me
on
some street
where
perpendiculars meet.
3.
Hurry
is part of it. For me too.
I
can’t get there till you come
too.
You are the one
I
came down to see,
talk
to just one minute, flee.
You
and only you.
Meet,
touch, tell, let go.
Mostly
let go.
That
is what I mean.
4.
Now
when men se you in Adrianople
they
say “You look no older than when
their
father saw you in Odessa.” And when
men
see me in Donegal or Chicago
they
say “We don’t know you at all.
Anybody
who looks like you
must
have gone away long ago,
you
have no business with our solid lives.
You
are a shadow. We don’t know you.
5.
Maybe
we do need a new religion
where
to men meet and join and part
linked
forever by their little time together
then
go their separate ways.
Like
the arms of a cross.
Like
a cross.
6.
Maybe
that is what always means:
they
go all ways.
We
are gone from each other
into
the now.
7.
We
had our own strange little story:
you
saw me, you spoke whatever
came
into your head, I heard, I spoke,
you
heard and we are forever.
Like
Shams-i-Tabrizi and Rumi
or
Po Ya the luetnist and his friend Chung—
when
Chung Tzu-chi died
Po
never played again.
He
smashed his lute.
Sign
of the rotted fruit,
apple
or pear, soft sweet, really gone,
we
put in a friend’s hand,
leave
it to him to throw away
This
beautiful wasted opportunity.
God
is a broken lute. Hurry tell we come.
PERMISSIONS
____
Reprinted
from First Intensity, no. 20 (2005). Copyright ©2005 by Robert Kelly.
For
a selection of Kelly's poetry, read by the poet, see the PENNSOUND entry below:
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Kelly.html
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