The Renunciations: Poems

By Donika Kelly

An extraordinary collection of endurance and transformation by the award-winning author of Bestiary

The Renunciations is a book of resilience, survival, and the journey to radically shift one’s sense of self in the face of trauma. Moving between a childhood marked by love and abuse and the breaking marriage of that adult child, Donika Kelly charts memory and the body as landscapes to be traversed and tended. These poems construct life rafts and sanctuaries even in their most devastating confrontations with what a person can bear, with how families harm themselves. With the companionship of “the oracle”—an observer of memory who knows how each close call with oblivion ends—the act of remembrance becomes curative, and personal mythologies give way to a future defined less by wounds than by possibility.

In this gorgeous and heartrending second collection, we find the home one builds inside oneself after reckoning with a legacy of trauma—a home whose construction starts “with a razing.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781644451472

Book preview

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Came the thaw, came the melting snowpack, the flooded river,

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THE RENUNCIATIONS

Also by Donika Kelly

Bestiary

THE

RENUNCIATIONS

Poems

DONIKA KELLY

Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2021 by Donika Kelly

The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Significant support has also been provided by Target Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

All rights reserved.

www.graywolfpress.org

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-64445-053-6

Ebook ISBN 978-1-64445-147-2

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First Graywolf Printing, 2021

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944389

Cover art: Lorna Simpson. Blue Dark, 2018. Ink and screenprint on gessoed fiberglass. 102 x 144 x ⅜ in (259 x 365.8 x 3.5 cm). © Lorna Simpson. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo credit: James Wang.

Cover design: Jeenee Lee Design

With gratitude for Elizabeth, Carlisha, Ama, and Heather

Contents

House of Air, Hours of Fire

Now

Dear—

Dear—

Bedtime Story for the Bruised-Hearted

Ars Empathica

The Last Time

Love Poem

Continental Drift Theory

Cartography as an act of remembering

In the Chapel of St. Mary’s

Then

Dear—

Oracle

Donika Questions the Oracle

The Oracle Remembers the Future Cannot Be Avoided

My Father Visits the Oracle Before I Am Born

Portrait of My Father as a Winged