Queen of Terrors

In his fourth collection, Kelly ( A Transparent Tree ) again captivates and inspires with 24 lyrical new works, filled with the fantastical and the exotic. The majority are quite short, but the magnitude of the yearning and questioning they each express keeps the words lingering on. In ``Rimbaud Back from Abyssinia,'' Kelly intrigues with the simplest of phrases--``So many ships come in, we could not tell which one had brought him to our city. But he smelled of Africa.'' Others leave readers pondering not only the writing but also the questions raised--like the title piece, really a philosophical riff on death, ``the King of Terrors,'' and sex, ``the Queen.'' One of the most compelling and complex stories is ``In Irish America,'' which reflects the immigrant experience through 32 prose-poems meant to be read or sung aloud (`` teamhair or Tara, uillean pipes and viscum album our hallows sucking on the oaX, and the stalks of the yarrow chitter in the zen wind that seethes (soughs) (sighs) across America.''). All of the works are sensuous and lilting, delicately enticing and full of secrets to be discovered. The theme of these pieces is perhaps best expressed by a line from ``The Maiden Showing an Old Man the Way''--``We are all just looking, all the time, and it is not even clear that we ourselves can see what we see.'' Another exquisite example of Kelly's ability to give readers a glimpse into the magical inner kingdom of the human consciousness. (June)