KEVIN MCLELLAN, Featured IN THE OCEAN STATE REVIEW

The Baton

unnoticed or
unseen

so a baton

with no hand-
off / you

believe

inadvertent
/ the art of

being unaware

until now / on
tenterhooks

your skin /

interchange
the words

art and act /

must not run
/ must

climb water

Kevin McLellan on “The Baton“

A & THE

The forward slash is used, of course, to indicate a line break when writing about poetry and since forward slashes are used throughout, “A Baton”—one of the few dualities—I will write out “(line break)” and consequently “(stanza break)” to honor the use of the forward slash in the poem. 

The title of the poem—within the first three lines, the first six words—is challenged by a questioning speaker. The transitional interplay of articles—a and the—sets up the reader to question articles which is a kind of baton transfer. But there’s no actual handoff (in the poem). The words hand and off—connected by a hyphen and separated by a line break—however do enact a kind of baton handling.

A “you” appears in the poem which becomes—an implied—the “you” and awareness follows, “/the art of” (stanza break) “being unaware” (stanza break) “until now” implies a past and is followed by “skin” i.e., the body which creates the mind-body connection and implies a, or the, separation of them.   

“The Baton” ends with wordplay which tonally contrasts the otherwise investigative nature of the poem thus far, yet still with a rigid economy, “the words” (stanza break) “art and act/” (stanza break) “must not run” (line break) “/must” (stanza break) “climb water”. The running, of course, refers to the baton, a baton, but climbing water in its true form is an impossible task, though numerous sources will tell us that humans are composed of 60% water.  

Kevin McLellan is the author of Sky. Pond. Mouth. (winner of the 2024 Granite State Poetry Prize); in other words you/ (2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection winner selected by Timothy Liu); Ornitheology (Massachusetts Book Awards recipient); Tributary; and Round Trip. Kevin’s book objects, Hemispheres and [box], reside in special collections including the Blue Star Collection at Harvard University. Kevin’s video Dick won Best Short Form Short at the LGBTQ+ Los Angeles Film Festival and it also appeared at the Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, Berlin Short Film Festival, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and others.