Snow day, Snow day

There is snow and the school buses are cancelled. Letters come from afar in spite of the weather. In Snow day, rob mclennan documents the detritus of living—the snow, the children, their toys, their resistance to naps, the accumulation of small daily events that make up this specific life. Except for what filters faintly through the media, there are no bombs, no daily fights for food or shelter. Even so, mortality is the quiet accompaniment rumbling beneath this work. We live on and find connection in spite of death. “How do [people] get strength to put their clothes on in the morning?” notes rob, quoting Emily Dickinson. By observing the private moments, specific to his world but common to many, he finds some kind of answer and some kind of grace.Samuel Ace, author of I want to start by saying (CSU Poetry Center, 2024)In Snow day, rob mclennan squints through the hazy weather of everyday life to wonder what value a writing life might offer. As time passes from his desk, his couch, his car, his books, his screens, mclennan looks forward and back in time, his continued commitment to the process-based long poem working its way through a midwinter day boiled over into weeks, months, years, decades, centuries. These poems show us how the smallest gestures can open onto wider fields of connection, bringing things into contact even when they feel distant.ryan fitzpatrick, author of No Depression in Heaven (Talonbooks, 2025)and Sunny Ways (Invisible, 2023)In Snow day, rob mclennan offers a quiet sibling to Bernadette Mayer’s beloved Midwinter Day, a personal reverie to revisit each year as the world darkens. Part history, part elegy, Snow day weaves together an international poetry community, reflecting mclennan’s long-term commitment to spinning and repairing that creative web.Jessica Smith, author of How to Know the Flowers (Veliz Books, 2019)