Brigit Pegeen Kelly Selected Works

Winner of the 1994 Lamont Poetry selection of The Academy of American Poets. "Kelly has a talent for coaxing out the world's ghosts and then fixing them in personal landscapes of fear and uncertainty . . . Smoothed by nuances of sound and rhythm, her poems exude an ambiguous wisdom, an acceptance of the sad magic that returns us constantly to the lives we might have led." —Library Journal

Richly allusive, the poems in Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s The Orchard evoke elements of myth in distinctive aural and rhythmic patterns. Her poetic strength lies in her ability to cast poems as modern myths and allegories. Propelled by patterned repetitions and lush cadences, the poems move the reader through a landscape where waking and dream consciousness fuse.

The winning volume in the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is To the Place of Trumpets. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: "Brigit Pegeen Kelly's poems suggest a kind of folk art—their clay washed of narrative grit, serviceably turned and fancifully decorated, fired, then filled at the creative instinct's oldest well. It is a pleasure to drink from this fine local pottery."