To the Place of Trumpets

Brigit Pegeen Kelly's poetry was out of sync with the poetry of the time period I encountered here: in a time period of blank verse and new formalism, Pegeen Kelly was doing deep-image formalism with religious and lyric overtones. This book was unavailable for a long time, but having it back in print is welcome. This early work combines folk lyricism with a Catholic religious sensibility with strong narrative impulse. Excellent.

This collection of poems marks the beginning of a fruitful and freeing new period in American poetry-- one in which overt lyricism, formal experimentation alongside musical phrasing, and imaginative myth-making coincide with an eerie beauty that is far from expected or platitudinous. Pegeen Kelly's style was unlike anything I'd ever seen when I first read her 2nd book "Song" in the mid 90s--a time of plainspoken realistic free verse and monotonous new formalism-- but she had already expressed it fully in this tremendously original first book (selected by James Merrill for the Yale Younger Poets Prize and compellingly introduced by him). Please bring this back into print!

The awarding winning first book of poetry by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. She has authored three volumes, all superb. A born Celt poet, these three books make up a classic, long line mytho-poetic journey, rendering the everyday mystic, and the mystical imbued in the quotidian. No poet can read just one! I'll play the prophet and say that the trio will become a quartet with a masterpiece fourth volume. A rare girl, is Herself!