Poetry. This book, winner of the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, takes flight from Plato's Theaetetus, in which Socrates tells us that the mind works as an aviary--particles of knowledge fly around like birds, and the thinker plucks them down to use when he or she sees fit. The bird becomes a metaphor for the action of the mind folding and unfolding into explosions and navigational patterns of flight. Lyrical and thought-provoking, it is a masterful debut. "Kelsey writes what it is to know, of 'what we become/ when the universe is seen in lights of its generation.' We are, in this work, in the midst of things, and as Plato's Socrates has it, 'the eye becomes filled with vision and now sees, and becomes, not vision but a seeing eye.'"--Carolyn Forche.

Author City: SELINSGROVE, PA USA

Karla Kelsey's first book, KNOWLEDGE, FORMS, THE AVIARY, was selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2005 Sawtooth Poetry Prize. The book was published by Ahsahta Press in 2006. She is also author of the chapbooks Little Dividing Doors in the Mind (Noemi Press) and Three Movements (Pilot Press). She has been awarded a Fulbright to teach in Budapest in 2011 and is on the creative writing faculty at Susquehanna University.

Reviews and Other Links
http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2006_06_009064.php