Book Launch/Signing, July 8

This was the official book launch for Kathleen McCoy’s book of poems, Ringing the Changes, just out from Finishing Line Press. I have written about this book previously when Kathie did a pre-publication reading in March. Tonight’s reading was at the Lower Adirondack Regional Art Center in Glens Falls, with copies of the book, bright & shining, for sale. The room was filled with colleagues from SUNY Adirondack & the wider North Country, poetry community, as well as her broad circle of friends & relations.

The poems in the book are organized in 4 sections, the first, “Dreams & Meditations,” a general category, with the remaining sections relating to liturgical seasons, Advent, Lent/Pashch/Passover, & Ordinary Time. She described her book as “a storied collection” with poems originally written for church, others pulled from drawers & notebooks.

She began with one of my favorites in the book “In dreams’ liminal land” with it’s stunning conclusion
                                                                           … so all
           that’s left when these kaleidoscopic dreams resolve
           is to enter their shadows and spin.

Others from the first section of the book were, “Little Buddha” (trying to save a Ladybug), “Learning to Pray,” & “Read My Lines” acknowledging her women writing companions.

Then on to poems with the Biblical connections, “Dreaming of Jesus” (dreams are a major theme throughout the book), “The Sixth Sign,” “Cleaning Heart,” & the title poem “Ringing the Changes” (as Kathie said, “what I’ve learned about bells”).  While the poems frequently have an epigraph from either the Old or the New Testament, they are not "religious poems" in the sense of expressing commonplace religious sentiments, but truly spiritual documents that reach across religious traditions to address the deep issues of compassion & inner inner growth that lie at the heart of all spiritual teachings.

The questions period that followed was more like a group discussion among friends, relaxed, funny conversations, even a request for one more poem, “Larval Dream.”

I’ve enjoyed this book very much, & as a student of spiritual texts in all traditions, expect to return to it again & again.

Kathleen McCoy will be reading at the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany on October 17, 2019, 7:30PM.