‘Departures' poetically explores loss and sorrow

By Philip Kolin (Negative Capability, 2014)

Sometimes a university professor surprises with his choice of topics. Philip Kolin does so with poetry that gives voice to sorrow as well as loss in his new book, Departures: A Collection of Poems. This volume is a must read for those who usually don’t handle these situations very well. In fact, many people are fairly skittish around grief of any sort. 

Loss can come in various sizes and shapes. For example, the poem “Passover in the Camps” expresses the harsh realities of a concentration camp which are interspersed with words from a Passover ritual.  How does one wrap one’s mind around the loss of human lives into the millions? With the final line, however, the reader is challenged to ask how one wraps his or her heart around the mystery of greatest loss.

The tragedy of World War II is then pared down to the death of one person in another poem, “For My Cousin Killed in Luxembourg, 1945.” Loss grows large again with two poems about New Orleans that articulate the dying of a city under the brute force of Hurricane Katrina. Yet there are also two poems celebrating the complexity of New Orleans, and the reader is reminded that the winds of Katrina are only a small part of the city’s history.

Kolin includes some very interesting characters that might help change a few people’s perspectives on loss. Enter 97-year-old Sister Bertha, in “A Date with God’s Cousin,” who will check Death’s dance card so she may “try a new step with him” when her time comes. There is also Katharine Hepburn who stars in “Ave, Kate.” In “Emergency Lovers,” Kolin visualizes the “in sickness and in health” aspect of a couple’s wedding vows. The wife is certainly not uneasy about the medical trappings in her husband’s hospital room as “she entwined her fingers/in his wires, tubes, cries.” 

Respect for his topic is Kolin’s operative attitude throughout the book. That respect can help us name our own losses.

This is a web-only review.