Ornitheology

Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. How are we to live in a world where people and countries pretend to know the answers? McLellan refuses to fall prey to this illusion, and his haunting, delicate, yet muscular poems probe the infinite layers of self, family, love, loss, illness, and (above all) what it means to combine-and-transcend them all and find meaning and power. Says Donald Revell, "In his beautiful ORNITHEOLOGY, Kevin McLellan exclaims a bold prospect of actual spiritual health for these dispiriting days." Cole adds that McLellan "has constructed an amazingly delicate world of resilient fragility." She says: "The word ornitheology, in addition to winning 'title of the year,' perfectly captures this book--it's aerial, and it's reverent; it's full of grace, and it glides. And it's full of birds! It's also full of great line-breaks, intricate repetitions, flickering moments, and an expanded sense of sky."

Kevin McLellan is the author of ORNITHEOLOGY, Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions), [box] (Letter [r] Press), TRIBUTARY (Barrow Street), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and the Gival Press 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his poems appear widely in literary journals. He lives in Cambridge, MA.