Sycamore • Oriole

McCullough’s poems are like songs—long, roving songs that wander the bitter cold slope of the eastern Rockies from the Crazies into the Wyoming Badlands. As Ed Folsom says in his introduction to the book, “McCollough’s dialect of ease and informality (working to de-form and re-form and in-form the shape of the poem)...neatly captures a cleaning out of a part of the self, turning the self lean, emptying the vowels, ridding the self of selfishness, a ritual of purgation.” From this ritual, McCullough’s work rises, easily, effortlessly, exploring everything from the smallest particle of dust to the self to the whole momentum of humanity