Kolin Publishes New Book of Poems, "Reaching Forever"

Dr. Philip Kolin, a University of Southern Mississippi Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus), has published his ninth collection of poems, "Reaching Forever," in the highly respected Poiema Poetry Series of Cascade Books.

Kolin's 67 poems are anchored in Scripture-- parables, settings, characters, metaphors, voices, --and are organized according to Biblical topics, such as Where Water Flows, Sheep, Wolves, God's Voice, and Toward Forever.

But Kolin's provides new ways of looking at Holy Writ by recasting Biblical parables and characters in the contemporary world. As Kolin points out, "The poems show how the sacred, the transcendent, is manifested in the flux of time and place; they expand what Martha Serpas calls "the 'already' which is also the 'not yet.'"

In "Noah's Neighbors," Biblical characters talk and act as if they came from the film, Deliverance.  A poem on the Samaritan woman from John 4 is paired with one about a homeless woman who lives in post offices in three different zip codes to avoid "the leprous jaws of the winter wind."  

"A Night in Lisle," an orphanage outside Chicago, was prompted by Kolin's reading the Book of Deuteronomy exhorting readers to care for widows and homeless children. And in "Saving Sammy," a teenage girl trying to abandon her newborn is called to Hannah's faith in 1 Samuel.

Kolin has won high praise for Reaching Forever. George Kalamaras, Poet Laureate of Indiana, honored Kolin for his "meticulous attention to the natural world" and for "blending moments of emotional exile" with the "compassion of deep communion." Joseph Bathanti, author of The 13th Sunday After Pentecost, lauded Kolin for his "beautifully sacramental" language.

Dr. Mary Ann Miller, Founding Editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, declared that Kolin's poems "help us hear God's voice in the twenty-first century" and Father Anthony Schueller, Editor of Emmanuel Magazine, claimed, "Reading this collection of Kolin's sublime verse, I felt I was on holy ground."

Kolin is as an international authority on Tennessee Williams's life and works and also edits the Routledge Shakespeare Criticism Series. Reaching Forever is available from Cascade Books or Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Reaching-Forever-Philip-C-Kolin/dp/1532659938/ref...).