The Music of Leaving

There is a music of leaving, as surely as there is that of arriving. And it is this distinct soulful music that we often hear, however faintly, in the background of our lives. McCallum’s poems are about elephants being traipsed through the Queens Midtown Tunnel, an unstable child’s slide, and roaming island dogs. About a visit to a family home before it is sold, a late night conversation in a plane above an ocean, and shrewd Irish falcons. About eloquent gravestones, da Vinci’s unfinished joke book, the elegant legs of a heron, and landing on the moon. About a jackknife dive at dusk, a young girl’s sleepover, and a memory instantly evoked by brushing against a stand of lavender. McCallum’s hope for her new book The Music of Leaving is that it delivers to her readers those “magical moments of understanding” that a good poem can.