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Book Title

The Natural Order of Things

Subtitle
Poems
Author 1
Donika Kelly
Poem Excerpt
Observe the baby hippo,
early born in hay over concrete,
stumbling and new in its enclosure:
 
Taut skin and fat and awkward steps—
it stumbles under a fluorescent sun
and nearly into the white walls.
 
Hippo baby, little river horse,
you should be in a river.
O Donika, you should be in love.
 
—from “A Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things”
Body
What does a life look like on the other side of survival, and can the one who survived come to recognize that she did?
 
Donika Kelly’s poetry is known for its resonant, unflinching confrontations with trauma and inheritance, translated through myth and nature. The Natural Order of Things expands these explorations into a new realm: one defined by joy and connection. It is an ode to companionship with people, animals, and our planet, and reveals the reparative power of intimacy. In poems inventive, playful, and formally nimble, Kelly pays homage to the voices and people she comes from, the songs of her lineage. Other poems follow the early stirrings of love to erotic transcendence with the lover and the self. Throughout, Kelly finds mirror and marvel in nature, art, and precious friendships. Though it once seemed impossible, she realizes a surprising place for herself, a rightness in the larger world.
 
The Natural Order of Things is a brilliant and moving book, one that reaches toward equilibrium and something like happiness.

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List Price
$17.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-64445-359-9
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
88
Trim Size
Trim Size
6 x 9
Keynote
An extraordinary and unexpected book of finding happiness, by the award-winning author of The Renunciations

About the Author

Donika  Kelly
Credit: Ladan Osman
Donika Kelly is the author of Bestiary, winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield Wolf Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

http://donikakelly.com/
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