Kevin McLellan is the author of: In other words you/ (2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection winner judged by Timothy Liu), Hemispheres, Ornitheology (2019 Massachusetts Book Awards recipient), [box], Tributary, and Round Trip. You can find him at https://kevmclellan.com/. His poem “For So Long” appears in the Winter 2023 issue of Carve.
When I first read this poem, I thought that the two figures in the beginning would collide. In a two-dimensional world, they certainly would. When they passed one another, I felt a real perspective shock, like an optical illusion. How did you conceive this play with perspective?
By suspending time—the poem is in the present tense, yet it isn’t until line 9 (in a poem of 13 lines) that the reader realizes with the word before that the event has already happened. This premeditated-for-a-split-second event happened during the pandemic when I was having very little interaction with others, by choice, and this was an opportunity to safely and actively “engage” with strangers without them knowing it.
There is a tight attention to space in this poem. How did this poem find its shape?
“For So Long” is from the ampersand series. These ampersand poems mostly employ an alternating one-line stanza/two-line stanza construction intending to enact instability for the reader. The poem’s vertical sensibility allows for a pressuring effect, as if the right margin is putting pressure on the left-justified words.
The final line ends in a colon. From a punctuation standpoint, one conventionally expects words to follow a colon, but instead we are met with endless silence. What did you hope for readers to hear in that silence?
Yes, silence does follow the colon at the end of the poem, yet it could also imply possibility or the hope of possibility or it could imply more of the same.
Throughout this poem there is a careful balance between wanting and hiding, observing and introspecting, dreaming and the immediacy of hands-on experience. What are some of your favorite poems on longing?
Since I directly associate longing with loneliness, longing’s origin, I will name favorite poems about loneliness for which there are many: “Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season” by Forough Farrokhzad (translated), “Hymn to Life” by James Schuyler, and anything by Hans Faverey (also translated).
What opens your eyes as a poet? What kinds of moments get stuck in your poet’s mind?
This is a great question! For me it is about sustained awareness, as opposed to the eyes opening, that allows for a greater chance for discerning what needs gleaning based on where I am with myself at a given moment. I use the word “gleaning” here because of Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I, a film that brought language to, and illuminated, my creative process, and affirmed that a collage approach to constructing poems is legitimate.