Wailing Walls.

WAILING WALLS By Philip Kolin (Wind and Water Press, 2006)

In his newest book of poems, Philip Kolin gives Wailing Walls us a lost and weeping world looking for solace. In vivid and moving details, he describes individuals suffering from hunger, poverty, betrayal, domestic abuse, AIDS, rape, and molestation. Kolin takes us into soup kitchens, the aftermaths of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, the ghettos in Watts and Cabrini Green, the run-down nursing homes, the land of "drought-baked" Somalia, and--through each scene--into the human condition. These "wailing walls" are, as his title poem says, "Paper and prayers/loamed in lamentation/Crying stones/set on memories/Trowled from broken/pieces of dreams/Sharp betrayals/ Frightened futures."

His poems bring us face-to-face not only with the troubles of our word but with who we are as human beings. "Fill in/The cracks here/With your tears/And reparations," the first poem instructs. In this way, we are participating not only in God's healing of the world, but also in his healing of our individual and often fractured lives.

Thus, the book works on both a societal and personal level. A call to action often comes through deeper awareness. Deeper awareness sometimes comes through individual suffering, which may lead to a better understanding of and reliance on a suffering and loving God who calls us to action. It is not surprising, then, that many of the book's strongest poems are rooted in the personal. We see a father who "Is always able/To tie a slipknot/Around the times/I think of him/And wish I hadn't"; an uncle who "still/ Yells at me/Yells at me for/Forgetting everything/He never learned."

For Kolin, hope exists as we listen to and obey God's call to help the need. Christ's injunction "as much as you have done so unto the least of these" echoes everywhere. Kolin won an award from the Catholic Press Association for his previous collection, Deep Wonder (Grey Owl Press, 2000). With Wailing Walls, it is easy to understand why.