This Far: Poems (Paraclete Poetry) - Softcover

O'Toole, Kathleen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1640602623 ISBN 13: 9781640602625

Publisher: Paraclete Press, 2019

Synopsis

This collection offers a rich harvest taken from one season in the poet’s creative life. Like movements in a musical composition, these poems share leitmotifs  ̶  grief and the desire to honor those “saints” who have passed on; the sacramental power of nature; and, how works of art illuminate and console as they do. They point to the tension between the practice of monastic silence and the urge to bear witness, interrogating faith in the light of crises facing the earth and our human community. At the same time, the poet celebrates encounters that offer blessings of hope, inviting us to join her in a pilgrimage that leads us, with her, “this far,” and gestures to what lies beyond.

 

About this title

About the Author:

Kathleen O’Toole has braided writing and teaching poetry into a professional life, in community organizing and faith-based social change. After receiving her MA from Johns Hopkins University, she taught writing at JHU and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her poems have been widely published, and have received special recognition from Hunger Mountain, New York Encounter/IMAGE Poetry Contest (2017), Northern Virginia Review, Smartish Pace, and Cape Cod Outermost Poetry Contest (2019). She is a Benedictine oblate of Emmanuel Monastery, and the current Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland.

 

Review:

“Anchored by the grace she discovers in nature, in fine painting, in her God, and even in the ‘sound of cows munching,’ O’Toole’s exquisite poems explore the universe of beauty and of loss.” —Jill Pelaez-Baumgaertner, poetry editor, The Christian Century; author of What Cannot be Fixed
 
“O’Toole’s visionary poems explore the boundaries between light and dark, past and present, life and death.” —Michael Simms, poet and publisher, Vox Populi and Autumn House Press
 
“Distinctive images from nature and the ancestral past shape Kathleen O’Toole’s unique voice, sustaining a compelling image of the poem as a reliquary that holds the treasures we cherish at turning points in life.”  —Kathleen Staudt, author of Waving Back: Poems of Mothering Life  
 
“O’Toole proves that she is not only a master of poetic form, but a seasoned pilgrim whom we can trust. Here is that rare thing: a voice acutely attuned to the world of pain through which we pass daily. What an incredible observer and naturalist she is, deeply contemplative and mindful and at the same time deeply elegiac.” —Paul Mariani, poet, biographer and memoirist; author The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernism
 

About this edition

• Publisher: Paraclete Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1640602623
• ISBN 13: 9781640602625
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112