"I believe
That if there is a God
It is a God that reveals itself
As it comes to know itself,
Eternally revealed and eternally unknown."
These lines from "Requiem," the last poem in Kelly Cherry's latest book, Death and Transfiguration, suggest something of the spiritual quality in her poetry. Reviewers describe her poetic vision as "passionate, authoritative, powerful . . . [and] transfiguring." Author of five books of poetry, five novels, an autobiographical narrative, The Exiled Heart, and a collection of essays, Cherry is the Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is visiting UAH as a candidate for the rotating position of Eminent Scholar in the Humanities.
Death and Transfiguration is about the basic questions of love and death, faith and suffering. To read more about Cherry's books, click on the titles below to link to the Amazon.com page for that book.
Death and Transfiguration: Poems (LSU Press, 1997)
God's Loud Hand: Poems (LSU Press, 1993)
Augusta Played: a Novel (Voices of the South, LSU Press, 1998)
Exiled Heart: A Meditative Autobiography (LSU Press, 1991)
Praise for Kelly Cherry's Poetry:
"Kelly Cherry's agile command of tone gives God's Loud Hand a variety of lyric modes and manners (not all loud) ranging from bunished elegance to limpid poignancy to lively wit. These are poems (as Cherry says about the work of Czeslaw Milosz) to read, dream, and hide in." -- Rachel Hadas
"Kelly Cherry's poetry is marked by a firm intellectual passion, a reverent
desire to possess the genuine thought of our century—historical,
philosophical, and scientific—and a species of powerful ironic wit that
is allied to rare good humor."
--Citation awarding her the first James G. Hanes Poetry Prize of the
Fellowship of Southern Writers
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