Kevin “Mc” McIlvoy (1953-2022)
The MFA Program for Writers is mourning the September 30 death of veteran faculty member, Kevin McIlvoy. Mc was 69. He joined the Program’s fiction faculty in 1990 and taught steadily with us until 2019. He supervised more than 140 students during his 39 semesters of teaching. He also served as our Interim Director from 2008-09 and was a member of the MFA Academic Board for many years. A longtime faculty member at New Mexico State University and editor of Puerto del Sol for 27 years, Mc was the author of 6 novels, a short story collection, and collection of stories and prose poems. His most recent book, the novel One Kind Favor, was published by WTAW Press in 2021.
Remembrances from faculty and former students will be posted at a later date. We’ll offer here an excerpt of a poem by Mc published recently in Gulf Coast.
With the p.t. on the first day
Kevin McIlvoy
The p.t.
painfully
embraced me
in order to
assess my whole
potential for
recovery, and
in a whisper asked,
“What is the goal?” and
sat nearer. We faced my
negative image pinned
to the illuminator
mounted wall-wise with
well-made young humans in
skeletal or muscular
forms of excruciating,
sublime exertion, prosaic
skins folded inside steel drawers
containing strapping tape, mind pliers,
nitrile blue gloves, depressing tongues.
My goal is to surpass my former
frangible selves, so many and so
alike, that let light through the fractures
and gaps for a little while before
my efforts to heal seal me closed.
Continue reading “With the p.t. on the first day” here: With the p.t. on the first day – Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts
