Longlisted for 2016 National Book Award for Poetry, Donika Kelly's revelatory debut collection is a slowly unlocking cage of mythic beasts, braced for escape. From coastal directions to intense emotional compression, Kelly’s book is full of movement, journeying forward and backward. With poems both beautiful and monstrous, Bestiary leaves behind, tracks backward and hurtles forward through the different faces, both real and fantastic, of a protagonist transforming herself through loss, trauma and determination. Nikky Finney’s transcendent introduction and Kelly’s very first poem propel you into a world so compelling, it's almost impossible to stop reading.