
The Symphonies
Robert Kelly(Author)
Wet Cement Press
Published on 15. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
98 pages
979-8-9918692-5-6 (ISBN)
Description
The Symphonies is a collection of 24 poems, created within the conceptual structure of symphonic music. Juxtaposing rhythms, speeds, accelerations, crescendos, tiny gestures, whispered tunes, each symphony has a key that suggests it's aspirations and mood. The Symphonies explores the music that only words can make through the process of our reading. In complex movements of lyrical beauty and quotidian precision, The Symphonies unfurl a music that moves from the ancient to the present moment.
Through his seven decades of listening to the poetry alive all around him, and rendering it for us in works of variety and nuance, Kelly has attained a music that plays in tones imbued with life and spirit. Those who still labor under the illusion that poetry is an art form of the young, have the mature works of Robert Kelly to contend with. After dozens of volumes of poetry Kelly continues to find new forms, new arrangements, subjects and concerns to bring to his masterful oevre.
"It is a desperate kind of music, writing songs without a tune in my head, trying to let words sing the truth in this anxious time." -Robert Kelly
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 203 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
Weight
265 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-9918692-5-6 (9798991869256)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Robert Kelly (September 24, 1935) is an American poet associated with the deep image group. He is the 2016-2017 Poet Laureate of Dutchess County, New York. Kelly received the Los Angeles Times First Annual Book Award (1980) for Kill the Messenger Who Brings Bad News and the American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation (1991) for In Time. He serves on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions, as well as Poetry International. He is married to the translator Charlotte Mandell.