What a shame that this title is out of print. CLEAR BLUE finds Connellan at the height of his exceptional abilities. No one else writing today holds a long poem together as well as Connellan.

This is one of the great works of genius to come out of the second half of the American century. Connecticut's poet laureatte is one of America's best kept literary secrets, and this is his most powerful, fully realized work.

"I am in search of a poem" writes Leo Connellan in his 14th book of poetry. This extraordinay search has taken the poet through his home state of Maine where sea gulls "peck the land sweeping around like a / sprung fish chowder of rocks of vanished summer" to New York where "cute little boy Cherubic" is riding to hurt people in Central Park," a city where "...there is a sudden overwhelming/rushing feeling that you might come apart." But, this poet doesn't. Leo Connellan is a survivor. His weapons: imgination and curiosity filtered through the craft of poetry. It's what defines him as catching fish defines the fisherman. "...We go out and we/work" hard...that's what we do... Two poems, "No, The River Never Frightened Me," and "The Shadow of a Leaf" illustrate Connellan's use of imagination and curiosity as weapons of survival. In "No, The River...." the poet's imagination is piqued by what is "over there...all we anticipated here..."Yet "Never do we get off the shore on the/other side of the river nor does/anyone from over there come among us... "Shadow of a Leaf" grapples with the question of man's immortality. The poet imagines someone who died " now seeing what I am denied to see..." He is desperate to call the person back...rip/ tombstones to ask you... not did it hurt but what do you know now..." Curiosity overcomes a fear of death. The most remarkable poem in this collection, and one which is among the best written today, is "Provincetown." Here is nature as deadly as it is beautiful. Provincetown was "vomited up" by the sea "eons" ago. The word vomit suggests something unhealthy which must be cleaned up, and feels exactly right after we read sections 11: "Thin Commecial street.../crowded summers with tourists/....where the defeated have run come to hide." It is a town surrounded by graveyards, with a history of evil and murder..."lights lit to/lure ships..." "Death sings to life here where/life style has no code" The poem begins with a bird "slaming a building, now huddled/against the back porch of our motel..." This image weaves in and out of the poem vanishing in the final stanza with a man's knowledge, "the sea coughed up his father's leg bone." Leo Connellan is one of the best. For over 20 years he has been writing some of the finest poetry in America. PROVINCETOWN is a continuation of that process. Read these poems. Read them aloud. Listen to how a master plays the language.

"Connellan's poems are full of questions and conflicts, choices not easily made. The urgency of these questions, their sharp imagery and the honesty of their language gather powerfully in this memorable and disturbing volume." --Maine Times

"It's vintage Connellan; brave, angry, intense, relentless. Time has only sharpened his sword and stoked his fire." --Small Press Magazine