About Kevin McLellan
Kevin McLellan is also the author of the full-length poetry collections Ornitheology (2019 Massachusetts Book Awards recipient) and Tributary; the book objects Hemispheres (in the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona and other special collections) and [box] (in the Blue Star Collection at Harvard University and other special collections); and the chapbook Round Trip. He makes videos under the name Duck Hunting with the Grammarian. Kevin is a native of Conway, New Hampshire and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Praise for in other words you/
Vulnerable, sexy, hopeful, and in every way human, Kevin McLellan’s, in other words you / is a wonder. I was brought so deeply into the intimacy, the neighborliness of the worlds McLellan opens to. The bros putting sunscreen on each other. The robin the size of a pigeon. Bodies morphing into dream bodies on endless screens. In this beautiful book the invitation of the / is also testament to a world where AIDS and so many ruptures have robbed us of generations: that devastation, that yearning for new connection. But how? How do we keep reaching out, running through the rain past the neighbors, asking someone to meet for a cheese and pickle sandwich? I loved these poems and felt like crying almost the whole time. Is this elegy? Insofar as it is also deep, deep celebration. The world goes on somehow. This book is the somehow.
—Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of Rocket Fantastic and Apocalyptic Swing
The astounding poems that comprise—vividly inhabit—Kevin McLellan’s in other words you/ waver between biblical lamentations and a contemplative sense of memorialized irony. They are a series of snap shots—an embodiment of—gay male longing and queer desire told through a series of time fractured images, song fragments, objects, and muted emotions: a remembrance of the past, vividly illuminated. McLellan vividly conjures those moments of emotional panic and sadness that jolt us from consciousness into a dream world of not just regret but a veneration, a reverence that borders on holiness. The enormous power of these poems is embedded in their quietness, their contemplation, transfiguration of the loss of the everyday.
—Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States and editor of Taking Liberties: Gay Men’s Essays on Politics, Culture, & Sex
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