Publications

This Far

Paraclete Press, 2019
By Kathleen O’Toole

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.

Practice

(Finishing Line Press, 2005)
By Kathleen O’Toole
Kathleen’s first chapbook explores the meaning of “practice” in poetry, meditation and public action.

Meanwhile

(David Robert Books, 2011)
By Kathleen O’Toole
In her first full length collection, the poems “delve and soar, stay grounded, and take flight” in the deeply personal, as well as more complex historical, ecological and spiritual worlds they probe.

In The Margins

2017, Cherry Grove Collections
By Christine Higgins, Ann LoLordo, Madeleine Mysko and Kathleen O’Toole
Seven “quartets” of poems by these women poets gathered to celebrate their twenty-five year journey with this “shared creation,” a conversation in poetry that continues.

Waking Hours

By Kathleen O’Toole
A chapbook, published by the Franciscan University of Steubenville (2017) and available from the author ($6.50 with postage)
A contemporary rendering of the monastic practice of “praying the hours” with attention to the natural world and the suffering of our human community.

Nick Virgilio: A Life in Haiku

(Turtle Light Press, 2010)
By Nick Virgilio Edited and Introduced by Raffael de Gruttola
Afterword by Kathleen O’Toole

O’Toole’s visionary poems explore the boundaries between light and dark, past and present, life and death.”

—Michael Simms

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