Ornitheology

About Kevin McLellan

Kevin McLellan is also the author of 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.

Praise for Ornitheology

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. McLellan, who was raised by canaries, has constructed an amazingly delicate world of resilient fragility in which “light is a seed that the mind must carry.” A stunning book that manages to be both honest and hopeful.
—Cole Swensen, author of On Walking On and Landscapes on a Train

At the funeral of his beloved sister, Helen, Henry Thoreau, standing by the parlor window, heard the call of a songbird and exclaimed, “One of us is well, at any rate!” In his beautiful Ornitheology, Kevin McLellan exclaims a bold prospect of actual spiritual health for these dispiriting days. He has found “an envelope of light” tucked into the corners of our world. He has descried a worthy and redeeming anticipation on branch and cloud and sunbeam.
—Donald Revell, author of Drought-Adapted Vine and Essay: A Critical Memoir