Bestiary by Donika Kelly
Donika Kelly’s debut poetry collection, Bestiary, is a string of documented events that best show the author’s transformation from the beginning of the collection to its end. Kelly illustrates vital moments key to her metamorphosis while borrowing the assistance of popular mythical creatures like: the mermaid, chimera, and werewolf. Much like Eduardo Corral’s Slow Lightning, Kelly harnesses the spirits of these creatures to share stories. Resulting in the creation of a personal bestiary which is a collection of a variety of ancient animals and other products of nature. Additionally, Bestiary explores the theme of the in-between. Staple creatures in this collection are not really one beast nor the other. The same are with the stories as they are in motion, meaning the reader is not quite at the start nor at the result of the evolution taking place on the page.
An example is the poem “A man goes west and falls off his horse in the desert” where a man falls off his horse and is stunned. While the rider wonders if he’s dead, the poem narrates the stages of him either passing from life to death or between states of consciousness: “...The man feels his chest. Am I a ghost? His lungs reply: You are the bravest stone” (40). This happens in other poems, some holding more trauma than others, and in the technique of using a state of limbo, Kelly is able to effectively capture trauma. Like the poem “Handsome is,” the speaker addresses her father’s sexual abuse: “In the dream, my father hides inside / another man’s body. I know him by his hands…Handsome as a close friend, a tree in bloom” (19). The father is somewhere inside this other beast, which in the speaker’s eyes is mutation of the father. Because this event is as traumatic as it is, often times our minds have to develop a different narrative in order to process that trauma. That is the case with this poem.
The poems that talk about love or relationships, the “Love Poem” series, are marked by the more notable mythical creatures, like the mermaid chimera, werewolf, Pegasus and centaur. Overall, these poems enforce the idea that our feelings towards others are really just projections of how we feel or see ourselves. Meaning the other person or subject in these “Love Poems” is really just a mirror or reflection, and the speaker, Kelly, is simply painting a self-portrait. Through that self-portrait, the speaker is able to witness their own transformation as it unfolds on the page. However, because the creatures she chooses are also mixtures of two or more animals not fully one way or another, she hints that this portrait is too in-between something. This explains why the last love poem, “Love Poem: Donika”, focuses on the author. By including herself in this bestiary, she is solidifying that she too is a myth, something that is in-between stages, meaning that Donika’s name belongs in this collection just as much. Kelly’s talent of weaving in mythical creatures into an ever-changing self-portrait is remarkable. While I’ve borrowed for myths and legends in my own work, I am considering Bestiary’s method of using myths to examine closely the reasons and processes behind the change.