Kolin Produces New Book of Poems

Dr. Philip C. Kolin, University Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters at The University of Southern Mississippi, has published his seventh collection of poems entitled Departures. It was released in early October by Negative Capability Press, which has published award-winning poetry books since 1981.

Kolin said Departures is his most expansive book of poems, including more than 70 poems divided into four sections – ‘Childhood Encores,' ‘Women and Men in/out of Love,' ‘Obsequies,' and "Revelation." The poems range from religious meditations to lyrics, to elegies, to dramatic monologues and often employ carefully crafted narratives to symbolize tensions in family, romantic, and interpersonal relationships, with the transformative power of love uniting the collection as a whole.

"The title is bountifully wide and deep," Kolin said. "It captures the journeys, the major shifts, psychologically, romantically, and spiritually, we go through in life."

By turns, Kolin's poems move from past to present, with many of them centering on  large historical topics -- World War II, the Holocaust, Katrina, civil rights--and the big names associated with them -- Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Enrico Fermi, Mother Teresa , Kate Hepburn -- and the departures they embarked upon. Other poems celebrate or commiserate with poets who have influenced Kolin's own work, including the Psalms, Dante, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens and Samuel Beckett.

Still other poems  capture the lives of people who otherwise would not be heard of - a deceased cousin slain in Luxembourg in WW II,  a former teacher sitting  in a bar with a "wingless angle pinned to her frayed cloth coat," a 90 -year old nun who "dates God's cousin" with "blue hair," a courageous woman of color in New Orleans, circa 1939, whose "skin was the color of oyster milk/ strained through honey," or a  jilted woman who "decorates her walls with dust and frames the emptiness."

Departures has already won high praise from some of this country's most influential poets. David Kirby, the award-winning Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University, declared that "Walt Whitman would love this book as much as I do."

Joseph Bathanti, the Poet Laureate of North Carolina, said Departures showcases "the lyric precision of a poet whose ear is to the earth, and his eyes on the firmament." Mary Swander, Iowa Poet Laureate and former editor of Flyway, a national poetry journal, said "Kolin writes with elegance and grace" and praised Departures for being "an engaging and contemplative collection."

Kolin is an international authority on the life and plays of Tennessee Williams and editor of The Southern Quarterly. He also serves as general editor for the Routledge Shakespeare Criticism series.

Departures is available through Amazon. An interview with Kolin about his latest book of poems can be found at http://www.negativecapabilitypress.org.