Brigit Kelly

1951 (age 65)

Palo Alto, California, United States

Brigit Pegeen Kelly was an American poet. Many people said how remarkable Brigit Kelly's work was and how she was influential in poetry and also vividly remembered reading her poems and the emotions her poems would invoke in them. Her use of creative repetition, contrasts, and metaphors helped lead to these emotions and lasting impacts. Her poems were often used in college courses and won many awards. To the Place of Trumpets includes several poems that reflect Brigit Kelly's Catholic upbringing. In Imagining Their Own Hymns, she writes of angels in stained-glass windows coming to life and flying away because they are "sick of Jesus, who never stops dying." In Those Who Wrestle with the Angel for Us, she also uses religious imagery to portray her brother's daring as a pilot. Some poems ponder death and dying, while Kelly also observes the natural world, fields, trees, animals, and wonders how changing one aspect of life might affect all the others. In Song, Kelly frequently uses music as a motif while dealing with many of the same subjects as in her first collection. The title poem associates a haunting tune with the brutal killing of a girl's pet goat by a group of boys. This poem introduces the reader to some of the unexpected and compelling ways the poet achieves meaning and effect through the agency of music. In another poem, she refers to the sounds made by bats as "the peculiar lost fluting of an outcast heart" and a group of trees as "a touchy choir." Throughout the volume, Kelly juxtaposes natural beauty against human cruelty. She also, as in her first book, refers often to religion, treating it with a mix of fascination and skepticism. Brigit Kelly's work has appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines, including The Nation, The Yale Review, New England Review, Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, five Pushcart Prize volumes, and six volumes of The Best American Poetry. Kelly, who has taught for many years primarily at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has also taught at the University of California at Irvine, Purdue University, Warren Wilson College, and numerous writers' conferences. During her time at Illinois, she was active in the planning of the English Department's successful proposal to create a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Besides, she was the senior poetry editor for the University of Illinois' Ninth Letter magazine that is devoted to literature and the arts. Kelly also had a love for the theater and revived Illinois' playwriting course.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly

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Background

Brigit Kelly was born in 1951 in Palo Alto, California. She grew up in southern Indiana and spent much of her adult life in central Illinois.

Career

Brigit Pegeen Kelly was an American poet. Many people said how remarkable Brigit Kelly's work was and how she was influential in poetry and also vividly remembered reading her poems and the emotions her poems would invoke in them. Her use of creative repetition, contrasts, and metaphors helped lead to these emotions and lasting impacts. Her poems were often used in college courses and won many awards.

To the Place of Trumpets includes several poems that reflect Brigit Kelly's Catholic upbringing. In Imagining Their Own Hymns, she writes of angels in stained-glass windows coming to life and flying away because they are "sick of Jesus, who never stops dying." In Those Who Wrestle with the Angel for Us, she also uses religious imagery to portray her brother's daring as a pilot. Some poems ponder death and dying, while Kelly also observes the natural world, fields, trees, animals, and wonders how changing one aspect of life might affect all the others.

In Song, Kelly frequently uses music as a motif while dealing with many of the same subjects as in her first collection. The title poem associates a haunting tune with the brutal killing of a girl's pet goat by a group of boys. This poem introduces the reader to some of the unexpected and compelling ways the poet achieves meaning and effect through the agency of music. In another poem, she refers to the sounds made by bats as "the peculiar lost fluting of an outcast heart" and a group of trees as "a touchy choir." Throughout the volume, Kelly juxtaposes natural beauty against human cruelty. She also, as in her first book, refers often to religion, treating it with a mix of fascination and skepticism.

Brigit Kelly's work has appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines, including The Nation, The Yale Review, New England Review, Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, five Pushcart Prize volumes, and six volumes of The Best American Poetry. Kelly, who has taught for many years primarily at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has also taught at the University of California at Irvine, Purdue University, Warren Wilson College, and numerous writers' conferences. During her time at Illinois, she was active in the planning of the English Department's successful proposal to create a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Besides, she was the senior poetry editor for the University of Illinois' Ninth Letter magazine that is devoted to literature and the arts. Kelly also had a love for the theater and revived Illinois' playwriting course.

Achievements

Brigit Kelly was best known as a poet. Her work has won numerous prizes. She became the holder of the Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prize and the Yale Younger Poets Award, selected by James Merrill in 1986, the Lamont Poetry Prize for her book, Song, in 1994, the Whiting Award in 1996, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Witter Bynner Poetry Prize in 1999. Additional honors include the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2005, the Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2006, and the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets in 2008. Kelly was also the finalist of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry in 1995, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the National Book Critics' Circle, and the Pulitzer Prize for the book, The Orchard, in 2005. In 2002 the University of Illinois awarded her both humanities and campus-wide awards for excellence in teaching.

Works

To the Place of Trumpets To the Place of Trumpets

book
- The Orchard
  (Richly allusive, the poems in Brigit Pegeen Kelly's The O...)
  2004
- To the Place of Trumpets 1988
- Song 1995
- Poems 2008

Views

Brigit Kelly's poetry is rich in detail and complex in emotion. Her subjects include the glories of nature, the capacity for evil, and the doubts stirred in her by religion. Some poems show Kelly to be adept at taking on a child's point of view.

Quotations: "This song is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness."

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

Robert Buttel: "Kelly has a singular, passionate, and accomplished art."

Brigit Kelly's student: "She was not one for showy demonstration of emotion. But her love, and that is what it is, in the end, what every dedicated teacher gives her students, was as enormous, complex, and humble as a prairie."

Stephen Dobyns: "Brigit Pegeen Kelly is one of the very best poets now writing in the United States. In fact, no one is any better. Not only are her poems brilliantly made, but they also give great pleasure. Rarely are those two qualities seen together in one poet."

Interests

Theater

Connections

Brigit Kelly's husband was Michael Madonick, a poet and fiction writer. They had three children.

husband:: Michael David Madonick

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Brigit Kelly

School period

College/University

Career

Gallery of Brigit Kelly

Gallery of Brigit Kelly

Gallery of Brigit Kelly

Gallery of Brigit Kelly

Achievements

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Awards

Other Photos

Other photo of Brigit Kelly

Other photo of Brigit Kelly

Other photo of Brigit Kelly

Other photo of Brigit Kelly

Connections

husband: Michael David Madonick

Connections

book

To the Place of Trumpets

Song

The Orchard

Poems

Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Background

Career

Achievements

Works

book

Views

Personality

Interests

Connections

Born

Died

Nationality

Career

1988 - 2016

Awards

Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prize, United States

Yale Younger Poets Award, United States

Lamont Poetry Prize, United States

Whiting Award, United States

American Academy of Arts and Letters Witter Bynner Poetry Prize, United States