Sky.Pond.Mouth.

<p><em>Sky. Pond. Mouth. </em>is a book that doesn't take much for granted--boundaries solidity distinctions between plants and humans lasting companionship faith enduring self health. This is a poetry of ontology permeable and mutually dependent. Every noun is potentially non-I <em>and </em>I. The isolated being is the connected being and vice-versa in a constant turn-over of needing & peace-of-mind needing & peace-of-mind. </p><p><br></p><p>Starting with the book's title physical and emotional qualities free-range between the animate and inanimate as though the world is written with dotted lines. Freedom McLellan quotes A.R. Ammons might be identity without identity an untethering even from untethering. In the long poem Winterberries as an example The wind made the light and an ash / tree seem one animated yet mortal / and then it ceased. For a moment / I thought the statue in the park / was me not <em>of me. </em>(Sometimes one / needs to tell someone to go away.) The sensual and the corporeal are geographic...</p><p><br></p><p>It's not always comfortable. It's frankly a bit lonesome. In <em>Sky. Pond. Mouth </em>a person might well be benthic or located at the bottom of a large water body. The climate setting is dialed to thawing solitude and to the temperature on the ocean floor. In Clouds a pond stretches out in the speaker's chest as the consequence of the loss of love that is of being in love for five minutes. In the forest setting of the prose poem A Definition of Loss trees are equipped with mouth holes too forming an orchestra which the poet joins as a soloist. Although this tree-and-human ensemble wouldn't be possible without his bravely different perceptions the speaker's not certain that his fellow performers actually hear him. A theme of <em>Sky. Pond. Mouth </em>is patience: it's worth it. The drifting away from set forms is necessary for knowing more knowing better knowing how to know. Staying unbroken or holding the expected form only blocks our perceptions because as McLellan says DNA strands and a pair of eyes know things despite their connectedness. </p><p><br></p><p>In the Ecosystems section early in this book there's a series of persona poems in which the speaker crosses over to a plant (swamp rose pink lady's slipper sheep laurel) a member of a marshland or renter of the unmown not so much a flowerbed or community garden club. These plants contemplate celibacy or reject labels and judgment. Resembling illustrations of single specimens from a botanical book they're like the poems in the book as a whole: distinct. McLellan doesn't repeat himself in this collection of prose poetry to lyric poems to longer sectioned exposition. With chiseled line breaks intriguing meta-poetic levels and punctuation like seed pods these poems if we look twice might flourish outside the book's margin past the grow light of the screen even (especially) other borderlines we haven't begun to imagine.</p><p><br></p><p>Alexandria Peary</p><p>New Hampshire Poet Laureate</p><p>Judge of 2024 Granite State Poetry Prize</p><p>January 5 2024</p><p><br></p>