Queen of Terrors: Fictions

Tracking the elusive self -- the ultimate subject of all narratives -- into ever more personal territory, Robert Kelly presents twenty-five new fictions to surprise even his wariest readers. All but one composed since Cat Scratch Fever, each story shares the urge to break constraints of linear thought in the reconstruction of experience. The stories tell of strange encounters with desires in its many forms: cosmography, bestiary, heroic mythology. Included are two novella-length works: "In Irish America" explores all of our displaced immigrant yearnings, men and women caught in the eloquent fantasies we spin in poverty and exile. The thirty-two chapters sing out loud, escaping into image-filled music. "The Red King," a subtle meditation on the poetics of politics, completes the book, complementing Kelly’s famous "Cities" (in the earlier volume A Transparent Tree). Here, a man of enigmatic, gentle omnipotence re-inherits his own body touch-by-touch.