Soul Matters Theme for March

Renewing Faith

“…As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.”

—- Philip Booth
First Lesson
from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999

Philip Booth was a poet who often used the landscape of New England, particularly the coast of Maine, as a metaphor for his emotional or psychological state. Booth studied with Robert Frost as a freshman at Dartmouth College. He taught at Dartmouth, Wellesley College and Syracuse University. Over the course of his career, he published many collections of poetry, including Lifelines: Selected Poems, 1950-1999 (Viking Press, 1999), which received the 2001 Poets’ Prize, Pairs (1994), Relations: Selected Poems 1950-1985 (1986), Available Light (1976), and Weathers and Edges (1966).