Walking Backwards (poetry)

“This work is a panoply: the sweetness of naming, the glint of epiphany, the lenten broth of memory, the joy of configuration. The writing speaks fearlessly and sure-footedly from an intelligent heart and reminds us of Robert Duncan’s counsel: "The poet’s voice speaks from no crevice in the ground…but from the hearth.”

“Ken McCullough’s vivid and deeply-felt poems deal with both human and geologic time with the valid (in terms of quantum mechanics) metaphor of walking backwards. The grief of departures is sharp, but his sense of wonder at the transient and eternally returning life of earth and sky is redeeming. This poet’s treatment of landscape, ecosystem, and his own loves makes us feel that for him the land is populated with mentors who teach with the yawk of a crow, the drumming of snow on a windshield, or the antics of an albino moose, Babylonian Baboon, or sequined iguana.”

“Ken McCullough’s poems are generally placed in the midst of nature, but they also take place sometimes in the midst of crowds. The range of poetry is broad, and the language of the poems is rigorous, full of surprising, sometimes rough, yet ultimately gentle movement. These poems are the real history of a life fully lived—not simply grand, intellectual exercises. McCullough writes of where he has been, and then tells us how this effects where he is going. He is a very private, yet generous and accessible poet.”

“These are generously imagined poems that display what Denise Levertov has called "fidelity to experience," that observe the intimate and ruminate upon the large, and are not shy of revealing their affections and their fears. Ken McCullough brings his views of the world, his being in the world, wonderfully to life in these pages.”