To the Place of the Trumpets

by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

The winning volume in the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is To the Place of Trumpets. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has "Brigit Pegeen Kelly's poems suggest a kind of folk art-their clay washed of narrative grit, serviceably turned and fancifully decorated, fired, then filled at the creative instinct's oldest well. It is a pleasure to drink form this fine local pottery."

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1988

Reviews

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

2024:

"I put the peaches in the pond’s cold water,
all night up the ladder and down, all night my hands
twisting fruit as if I were entering a thousand doors,
all night my back a straight road to the sky."

from "The Leaving"

I was an infant when this book came into the world. How astonishingly wonderful and honest and true that is, no? That powerful women poets have been doing this work long before I had speech, or the ability to walk, or sign my name. Praise all the deities known and un, for Brigit Pegeen Kelly. For the fact of her poems, wild hearth miracles, for the utter incredulity I feel, in this moment, of being able to live, and have them when I need them so.

***

2021:

It's because of "The Leaving" that I compulsively searched out and had to possess Brigit Pegeen Kelly's debut. I skipped the introduction, as I wasn't interested in being told about Kelly's poems before reading them, and returned to it after I'd finished the book. The truth of the poems is not in how they are introduced by Merrill here, not for me.

You will find everything you need in Kelly's poems in the poems themselves, which are darkly spiritual, ferally domestic, and unsettling-pastoral. As I type they are burrowing into my brain-soil, taking up residence, echoing like the stillness of bells, a sound that haunts Kelly's poems, and now me. I will make many returns here, and to the books she wrote afterwards.

[Tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved To the Place of the Trumpets, although I didn't think it was quite as astonishingly fantastic as Song, although it carries the same elements of brilliance in a similar valence of mysticism and the irreal. In the foreword by James Merrill, he points out that her poems tend to draw on her Catholic background, without writing uncomplicatedly religious poems. She sees the holy in things, and her poems are frequently poems of holiness, but she is also able to rebel against the strictures of an organized faith in her poems. The language moves between simple and reveling in sacredness (like in "The House on Main Street": "Where we live on our hill only the deer / congregate, thin as air, the ghosts / of lost soldiers, trailing torn flags") and wildly rich in metaphor (like in "Garden Among Tombs": "winged hands, and heads like tamarisks / shining in the lake, animals / he does not know with purple legs and silver / fins tangled in kelp").
I liked every poem, although there were some that I liked better than others. My favorite poems were "The Thief's Wife", "Garden Among Tombs", "The Cruel Mother", "Imagining Their Own Hymns", "The Leaving", "The House on Main Street", "The Place of Trumpets", "To the Lost Child", "Lullaby for the Gardener".
Highly recommended and intend to acquire a copy when I can do so.

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kelly's poems are mostly ways of expressing vivid images - the visual component is by far the strongest in her poems. It makes them very life-like when you read them. They tend more to specificity than generalizations, also.

I was reminded somewhat of the memoir Epitaph for a Peach.

[Jessamyn Duckwall · Rating 4 out of 5]

BPK is a massive influence for me and someone whose later work i’ll be returning to again and again. i’ve had this first volume of hers on my shelf for a long time and decided to read it on a lark. while not every *single* poem was a zinger, a ton of them are. in particular i loved “The Peaceable Kingdom,” The Thief’s Wife,” “The Cruel Mother,” “Imagining Their Own Hymns,” “The White Deer,” and “Mount Angel.” it seems like all the poems i loved the most are the ones that most closely resemble the characteristics of BPK’s later work—a kind of bastardized religiosity, animals, tenderness/sacredness/eros/violence.

glad i finally picked this one up.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brigit Pegeen Kelly's poetry was out of sync with the poetry of the time period I encountered here: in a time period of blank verse and new formalism, Pegeen Kelly was doing deep-image formalism with religious and lyric overtones. This book was unavailable for a long time, but having it back in print is welcome. This early work combines folk lyricism with a Catholic religious sensibility with strong narrative impulse. Excellent.

[Jacqueline Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fantastic collection. While Song is the one that truly sticks with me, reading Kelly's first work is such a joy. I particularly love the calm, quiet decrescendo of the final section of the book. All in all, definitely recommend :)

[Stephen Byrne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning, probably one the best female poets of this century.

[c · Rating 2 out of 5]

kinda lost interest in this as it went on

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am very glad I read these poems. I love this poet, her evocative metaphors, her insight and her joy. All of this comes through.

[Charis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rural and religious themes that weren't always my cup of tea, but still beautifully put together poetry

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Thief's Wife

He took things and that was bad, but it also
made me feel pleasure, as when we lay by the lake
and he did things to me in broad daylight
that should not have been done, people walking
arm in arm below who must have seen, but I,
stunned with heat, keeping my eyes shut, thinking
that the world when my eyes were shut
was a world that would forgive those who could not see;
or when, another time, he told me he had slept
years before with his sister, thieving even then,
and suddenly that which I could not have imagined
was mine, hundreds of blackbirds massing
in the air outside my door, and he afraid
I would walk away, but I drawn even more toward
that body which made another body lie down
in darkness under it and die. When you are weak
those who walk with evil and live look strong
to you. And if that which was to be your strength
fails you, you will take strength where you can.
And then there were the things. They were so beautiful.
The axes he sharpened and hung over the fence,
their blades like ships' flags, the sky sailing
over them as over water, raising waves of light, and
the hammers and nails with their fine biting sounds,
and rolls of chicken wire stretched in sagging rows
that the honeysuckle spiralled over
in the summer, and the bellies of the pigs, soft
as butter, and the eraser blue spots
beneath the rabbits' ears, and baskets of fruit
which grew pungent as it spoiled, and candy
in gold papers and scotch in swollen-necked bottles,
and needles and pins, and the silk he brought
me once for my birthday, yards of gray silk,
yards of it, lovely as the herons dropping
on wide wings over the lake. I used those things,
saying This is bad, but using them nonetheless.
I never took anything myself, but what is
the difference? Your hand passes over something
that is stolen and settles on it---the way
chicken feathers settled this morning in the honey
I spilled on the table---and then forever
your hand is one with that thing, forever that thing
is in your room. That is why people steal, I think.
To make things last.

A woman with bibles comes to visit me.
Each time she brings a different man in a shiny
brown suit, and each time I let them in, though at night
I dream that they all become beetles
in my yard, swarming in their slick shells, and no way
to put them out. Still, when a poor woman comes
I give her soup, even if my son
strikes me---we will have more where that came from---
and I feed the dogs in the alley since
my own son is a dog, and sometimes I laugh
when I look up at the clock face of the moon
and think that at least my husband wasn't able
to steal that, for if he had, I would have put my hands
all over it---and never let it go.



Imagining Their Own Hymns

What fools they are to believe the angels
in this window are in ecstasy. They
do not smile. Their eyes are rolled back in annoyance
not in bliss, as my mother's eyes roll back
when she finds us in the dirt with the cider---
flies and juice blackening our faces and hands.
When the sun comes up behind the angels
then even in their dun robes they are beautiful,
with their girlish hair and their mean lit faces,
but they do not love the light. As I
do not love it when I am made clean
for the ladies who bring my family money.
They stroke my face and smooth my hair. So sweet,
they say, so good, but I am not sweet or good.
I would take one of the possums we kill
in the dump by the woods where the rats slide
like dark boats into the dark stream and leave it
on the heavy woman's porch just to think
of her on her knees scrubbing and scrubbing
at a stain that will never come out.
And these angels that the women turn to
are not good either. They are sick of Jesus,
who never stops dying, hanging there white
and large, his shadow blue as pitch, and blue
the bruise on his chest, with spread petals,
like the hydrangea blooms I tear from
Mrs. Macht's bush and smash on the sidewalk.
One night they will get out of here. One night
when the weather is turning cold and a few
candles burn, they will leave St. Blase standing
under his canopy of glass lettuce
and together, as in a wedding march,
their pockets full of money from the boxes
for the sick poor, they will walk down the aisle,
imagining their own hymns, past the pews
and the water fonts in which small things float,
down the streets of our narrow town, while
the bells ring and the birds fly up in the fields
beyond---and they will never come back.

*

[Kate DeLay · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I die bury me with all my BPK collections

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Many pretty images such as:
Pollen would have no savor if it came
from colorless flowers, and silent bees,
for all their flying, would make no honey
but some watery substance, or nothing
at all.
An overall gloomier tone than I could enjoy, and image after image that seemed to me strung one upon another until I lost their sense and could neither follow nor retrace my steps.

[Virg · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Johanna C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

alright. but not mindblowing.

[Julianna Schock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Kelly's pomes. They're all simply beautiful and I like the themes she speaks on