Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary

Awarded the 2005 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, selected by Carolyn Forché.

Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary 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 whenever he or she sees fit. A book-length project in nature and scope, Karla Kelsey’s work pushes against this traditional idea and image of knowledge, investigating the meeting of thought, emotion, and experience by pulling language through variations of poetic and linguistic form.

Ahsahta Press, 2006.

Download a free PDF of the book here.