Kolin’s Latest Book of Poems “Evangeliaries” Released by Angelico Press
Philip C. Kolin, a member of Saint Thomas Catholic Church in Hattiesburg and a Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at The University of Southern Mississippi, has just published a new collection of poems, Evangeliaries, with the highly respected Catholic Angelico Press.
The title for Kolin’s latest work comes from ornate religious books dating from the 5th to the 12th centuries that included only the Gospel readings for a given set of Sundays and holy days. “These books inspired my poems, each anchored in or alluding to a Biblical setting, figure, place or trope,” he explained.
Evangeliaries begins with poems about Genesis—light, water, fire, God’s breath, Eve – and Adam, who was created from “blessed dirt.” Poems about the parables focus on salt, sheep (“one of the most frequently mentioned creatures in Scripture,” noted Kolin), bread, sparrows, stones, and tares. Quoting philosopher Paul Ricoeur, Kolin pointed out that Biblical metaphors, or pericopes, “had a surplus of meaning; they are texts in miniature.”
The longest section of Evangeliaries is “Oremus” (“let us pray”) where Kolin fashions poems based on Biblical allusions and echoes in such diverse places as a Walmart parking lot, a Tilt-a-Whirl ride at a church carnival, a food truck, and the waves of the Gulf. Characters in these and so many other places are missionaries who “carry rainbows in their Bibles” and “raise special bees for sanctuary candles,” disciples who” tend flocks of children in the grim of night protecting them with millstones,” and prayer warrior trees that “weave papyrus-like hymns in the language of leaves.”
In the last section Kolin turns to the Apocalypse with poems about “Lazarus Care” where friars come to bury “those who had no one to say their name” and “newborns arriving from massive steel cradles that rocked them into trash. . . . Their coffins were so small,” and poems about poor souls who rent a grave and “are pushed down,” their identity lost when the owner of the grave dies, and a woman recently deceased rides a train where “the conductor speaks only
In vowels” and she passes by people “with used up faces and torn hearts” who should have loved her.
London University professor and editor of Amethyst Sarah Law commented “In this beautiful collection, Kolin offers a structured series of poems that are not only learned and perceptive. but lyrical as well.”; Jack Bedell, editor of Louisiana Literature, observed that “Kolin’s poems glow with the clarity of white light”; and Mary Ann Miller, Editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, emphasized that “Kolin not only gifted us with a sweeping typological vision, but a plea for holiness.” Evangeliaries is available from Angelico Press (http://Angelicopress.com) or Amazon.
