Reaching Forever: Poems

By Philip C. Kolin and Paul Mariani

Reaching Forever is Philip C. Kolin's ninth collection of poems, the sixth to focus entirely on spiritual poetry. Like the poet's most recent book, Benedict's Daughter: Poems (2017), the poems in this new collection are anchored in Scripture.

Organized according to major Christian topics--sheep, water, God's names, eschatology--Reaching Forever is ripe with scriptural parables, symbols and imagery, settings, allusions, and speakers ranging from God to biblical characters to contemporary figures. Consistent with the Poiema Series, these poems open the "windows" of faith. But they are not simple catechesis. Rather, they "leap over the sills," to quote D. S. Martin, providing new ways of looking at Holy Writ and applying them to today's world--to see the sacred in the daily.

Undeniably the most distinctive feature of Reaching Forever is the large number of poems set in the contemporary world, but contextualized through the Bible. For instance, a poem on the polyandrous Samaritan woman is paired with one about a homeless woman in a large city who also has had many husbands and children. A long litany poem about God's appearances in Scripture is followed by one on catadores (garbage pickers) who hear rumbling below the filth and wonder what God's voice is saying. A short poem on the riches of Cana seques to a spiritual lyric about monks who transform donors' pennies into bread for the poor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532659959

Philip C. Kolin

Philip C. Kolin is the distinguished professor of English (emeritus) at the University of Southern Mississippi where he is also the editor emeritus of the Southern Quarterly. He has published more than 40 books, including 12 collections of poetry, most recently Emmett Till in Different States, Reaching Forever (Wipf & Stock, 2019), and Delta Tears (2020).

Book preview

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Reaching Forever

Poems

Philip C. Kolin

foreword by Paul Mariani

4001.png

Reaching Forever

Poems

Poiema Poetry Series

30

Copyright ©

2019

Philip C. Kolin. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-5993-5

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5994-2

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5995-9

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Kolin, Philip C., author. | Mariani, Paul, foreword.

Title: Reaching forever : poems / by Philip C. Kolin, foreword by Paul Mariani.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2019

| Poiema Poetry Series

30

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-5326-5993-5 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-5326-5994-2 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-5326-5995-9 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Poetry—

21

st century

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

01/28/19

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Where Water Flows

Baptism

A Pond is Heaven’s Scroll

Reading Ponds

The Mississippi River Talks about the Book of Genesis

The Fugitive River

Let There Be Land

The River Burial

Lost in the River

Pentecost on the Beach

Dusk Dancers

January on the Gulf of Mexico

Seasonals

Rocks

The Kingdom of Grass

Breaking Bread with the Gulls

Azaleas

Meek April Dusk

New Moons

Autumnals

Trees in Late Autumn

They Still Produce Fruit

The Black Blizzard

The Millennial Freeze

Wolves

Noah’s Neighbors

Eliab’s Complaint

The Betrayer

Publicans

Plotting

A Simple Ten-Minute Procedure

Sons of Moloch

Sheep

Smell Like Sheep

The Shepherd Boy from the Cova

Zacchaeus

Samaria

Magdalen Redux

A New York Nativity

Saving Sammy

A Night in Lisle

Cana

God’s Bakers

A Prisoner of Christ

The New Asylum

The Woman on Short Columbia Street

God’s Voices

Searching for God

Akedeh

God’s Book of Names

God Comes to the Eternal Gate Holiness Church

His Life was an Explosion of Angels

She Traveled in a New Language

Dwelling Among Us

Catadores (the Diggers)

Cathedral Antiphons

The Sacrament of Sleep

Toward Forever

Eve the Day After

Job’s Blazon

Joseph’s Transitus

Dead Clothes

Obsequies for Thomas à Kempis

Uncle Kenan Praying at Church

Old Men at Funerals

Hospice Silence

A New Orleans Funeral

Her Father’s Grave

Chicago Columbaria

The Canticles of the Dead

A Soft Sifting

A Parable of Shoes

When God Arrives

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Paul Mariani

Begin with water. Begin with Genesis and the flood. Begin with the Creator of it all, that incredibly generous and consummate artist. It is we creatures who—the poet reminds us—must be baptized, submerged, into the mystery if we are ever going to begin to adequately respond to that creation with its vast waters defined by those coral and turquoise,/reefs bejeweled with fins and fans. It is we who will have to be pooled into fonts,/wells, and tides if we are ever to acquire a majesty which was never of our making. Be still, reader, and immerse yourself in the infinite symphony of the universe, and trust in this poet to guide us.

Philip Kolin has worn many hats over a long and illustrious career. He’s a scholar-professor steeped in literature and religion, a teacher, an editor, and a searcher. But above all he’s a poet. And not just any kind of poet,