Grasping for Heaven: Poetry and Prose

Grasping For Heaven is Bob Kumin's debut collection of poetry and short prose. Kumin moves with rare confidence across the full span of a life — from the blue-skinned infant breathed back to life by a great-uncle's steady hands, to the grandfather watching his granddaughter toss a rose into his imagined grave — and the result is a collection that feels less like poems on a page than like memory itself, arriving without apology. What distinguishes Kumin's voice is its refusal to be only one thing. He is comic and elegiac in the same breath, domestic and visionary in the same stanza.The book is divided into 3 sections, symbolically representing three stages of a human being's spiritual journey: Rising from the Muck, Tugging from the Heart and The Hand on the Shoulder. Read more