Copies of “Benedict’s Daughter” are available at the Ave Maria Grotto or may be ordered online at www.amazon.com. Any profits from the book will be donated to Saint Bernard.
CULLMAN – Dr. Philip C. Kolin, the distinguished professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, has just published a beautiful book of poems, “Benedict's Daughter,” about two long-time St. Bernard Oblates and supporters, Margie and Al Parish from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Anchored in Benedictine spirituality, the poems about Margie, who was Kolin's spiritual director for more than 30 years, and her family alternate with those about Benedictine vows, traditions, saints and the Liturgy of the Hours. Margie, or “Midge” as she is called in the poems, lived the Benedictine Rule as a mother, adoptive parent, teacher, adviser and friend. In his blurb for the poems, Abbot Cletus observed that Midge "cultivated the monk within . . . not within the monastic cloister but in the world."
Even so, the poems pay tribute to so many familiar places and people at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman.
There are poems about Father Luke Fazi, who was Margie's spiritual guide, on “God’s outdoor lectionary,” and Brother Leo on silence- "He prayed in less heard places/and he spoke more to God/and less to men. In silence/he abstained from self." A poem on Saint Bernard Oblates notes "they are sent holy into the world/ to bring the kindness of God made flesh to homes, offices, hospitals, prisons, malls, schools, factories, banks, courts, the road." There is even a poem about “A Manual for Oblates,” a book Margie received from one of the monks in 1958.
Kolin also includes poems about the Ave Maria Grotto, Benedictine Cellarers (or providers of hospitality), one of whom was Margie, who "harvested three freezers on her back porch for the poor," and gardens, including that nurtured by Benedictine mystic, St. Hildegard of Bingen who saw “visions of angels spinning/ in ecstasy before the throne of God.”
Kolin captures the voices of so many speakers, including St. Benedict himself in a sermon against temptation and Margie's daughter who speaks while in her mother's womb, “I am on a voyage/ from eternity, through wombed time…we share paradoxes—she is my cloister/ I am her psalmody singing wildly about the universe inside me.” There’s even a poem about Margie's guardian dogs, "angels without wings" whose “eyes blazed like meteors” and “their hair stood spike stiff.”
Kolin's poems are filled with scriptural allusions, powerful images and a love for all things Benedictine. “Benedict's Daughter” celebrates a spiritual friendship which owes its existence to the monks at St. Bernard, both those today and those still praying in the cemetery and whose "vows do not stop in death/ but continue in their wooden chantries."
Copies of “Benedict’s Daughter” are available at the Ave Maria Grotto or may be ordered online at www.amazon.com. Any profits from the book will be donated to Saint Bernard.
