"McNeilly's verse speaks directly, honestly, and memorably to the reader's heart, soul and imagination."

- Midwest Book Review, Margaret Lane

Joseph Keller McNeilly's love of teaching is clear in his first book of poems, Out Here. Spanning his entire life---from his childhood as an outsider in an Amish community to his present life as professor at a small coastal California college---McNeilly's poems speak directly, honestly, and unabashedly. McNeilly joins a very American tradition of plain-talk wisdom with these poems that sometimes shock, often surprise, and always entertain. (Release date: September 23, 2000. ISBN: 0-9661452-3-2. US$17.00)

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"Behold, the apple without the pie. Behold the burning tree in your own back yard. These flame-hardened, lucid poems take you there. Not for the timid. The bare imagination stalks these pages. Behold."

• Michael Wolfe, poet

"Joseph McNeilly's collection of poems, Out Here, is so brilliant that it almost defies description. This diverse collection rivals the work of Anna Akhmatova and Charles Baudelaire. Sharing their intense poetic sensibility, McNeilly insightfully interprets what could have been mundane experiences, revealing instead the power that underlies daily life. His poetry is beautiful in its honesty, ecstatic in its rythm, inspiring in its vision. McNeilly captures the tender ("When it Happens"), the viscious ("Every House a Dog"), the surreal ("Autopsies"), the humorous ("Queen"), and everything in between. All share a lucid clarity that make you want to laugh, cry, and scream at once with the immense realization that you're alive. Universal enough to appeal to anyone who is living in this wild world."

• Diana Fox

Man, Walking

Out here, with nothing
for six miles in either direction
save spindly mangroves
and swirling road dust, is a man
walking. He's walking
against the grain of cars
and smoking trucks with his eyes
forward, a message
that he has no intention
of wooing a ride. There's something
of the egret about him, a gangly man
and each stride long, a flicker
of pause
at the end of each footfall. He's
traveling light, just
a wrinkled paper sack
under an arm.

And that
is all I know
about him, except to say
that I envy him his walk alone
on this desolate road, the elegance
of his task: six miles (at least)
on foot, his only company
the kinesthesia of walking, the chyme
in his gut, and the machinery
of his mind
ticking through the mundane
and profane, 'til all that's left
is that terrible terrible aloneness
that leads
to saving acts
of the imagination:

Her nakedness is sprinkled
with honeysuckle blossoms.
Suddenly her nipples sprout lips
that sing, "there was nothing
before you."

The red sky is full of white birds
shitting sapphires into my mouth.

My children will never die.
I see them standing on a bluff
watching the sun explode. They are
flash-forged into sapphires
plucked from the air
by white birds.

Hell, this could be Homer
walking home, the dazzling
red and green eyes
of four chimeras in his sack, gifts
for his wife and children.

© Joseph Keller McNeilly, 2000