Shadow Talk

As C. S. Lewis aptly reminds us, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” And here they are: twenty-five new fairy tales for readers of all ages by a master fabulist and poet, accompanied by an equal number of original illustrations by a captivating artist, Emma Polyakov. These tales possess such alluring titles as “The Fox and the Other Side,” “The Priest’s Peculiar Wife,” “The Boy in the Camel,” “The Leper’s Touch,” and “The Rainbow.” They employ suitably beguiling entities as well: spectral foxes, a telepathic ape and antelope, shadows that speak, an odd djinn, a puzzled king, an umbrella-loving serpent, protean elves, and other visions of the ultimate reality just beyond sight. The author himself remarks: “A story is the best gift we can give one another. A story can stay in mind or come to life again. When a story is simple enough it becomes a myth. Meanwhile I try to tell all the stories the mind tells me. And keep listening.”

In addition to many books of poetry and essays, Robert Kelly has published five collections of short fiction (all from McPherson & Co.); a book of plays (Oedipus After Colonus); several novels (most recently The Work of the Heart); and new poetry: Calls; The Secret Name of Now; and Reasons to Resist. A large collection of his essays, A Voice Full of Cities, has recently been matched by A City Full of Voices, studies of his work by many writers. He teaches in the Written Arts Program at Bard College. <BR> Emma O’Donnell Polyakov studied art at Bard College, and currently teaches and writes about religion. She is Assistant Professor of Religious and Theological Studies at Merrimack College, and the author of The Nun in the Synagogue: Judeocentric Catholicism in Israel and Remembering the Future: The Experience of Time in Jewish and Christian Liturgy, as well as the editor of Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Ways of Seeing the Religious Other.