Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present Richard Collins’ poem “The Samadhi of Words” as our final monthly featured poem from a full-length book for Issue 10: Fall 2025. You can find more poetry in their book, Stone Nest, available from Shanti Arts.
The Samadhi of Words
Delusion itself is satori.
—Kodo Sawaki
Bai Juyi used to beat himself up
for not being able to rid himself
of poetry, the last attachment.
He shouldn’t have been so hard on himself:
after all, there is such a thing as
the samadhi of words.
Now, the satori of words is a common
phenomenon in the literature of Zen:
an innocent conversation, then: POP!
goes the weasel of enlightenment.
Poetry is different. The punchline is not
the point: it’s the meditative state that matters.
The journey not the destination
is a threadbare cliche, but each day
must be lived on its own terms, okay.
Samadhi not as a funerary monument,
nor as intense concentration, a high
the opposite of dizziness: hishiryo.
Thinking-not-thinking, yes, but the magic
of samadhi is absorption, and for me
(and Bai Juyi) what absorbs the mind is poetry.
(This poem was first published by Willows Wept Review.)
About the Poem
The poems in Stone Nest are an extended conversation with some ancient Chinese poets about Zen practice, poetry, and nature. In this poem I sympathize with Bai Juyi who wanted to retire as a monk to the mountains, but he was hindered by his attachment to his daughter Golden Bells. Like nature, she inspired his poetry which became another attachment. But the world of daughters, nature, and poetry are the very instruments of enlightenment to the bodhisattva, whose field of practice is not in cloistered seclusion but in everyday life. “Delusion itself is satori.”
Many Zen poets and practitioners experience this struggle between spiritual renunciation and worldly entanglement, emptiness and form. How to reconcile selfless practice with a passion for self-expression? These pursuits don’t have to be at odds: in fact, they can feed each other. Gerard Manley Hopkins, convinced that his callings as Jesuit priest and poet were contradictory, renounced poetry until he found it gave him a voice to extol the “Grandeur of God.” Zen poets, past and present, who experience deep absorption in the grandeur of this world may even gain wisdom through the way of poetry, Shidō (詩道). This is the samadhi of words.
Many thanks toWillows Wept Review, where this poem was first published, and to editor Troy Urquart who nominated it for a Pushcart Prize.
Author Bio
Richard Collins taught at universities in the United States, Wales, Romania, and Bulgaria before retiring as Dean Emeritus of Arts and Humanities at California State University Bakersfield. He spent a decade at Louisiana State University (where he was the first faculty advisor for New Delta Review) and a decade at Xavier University of Louisiana (where he edited the Xavier Review). He has been a Fulbright researcher in London and Fulbright senior lecturer at the Universities of Bucharest and Timişoara, as well as a Leverhulme Fellow in Wales. He has translated poetry from Romanian and books from French, including Taisen Deshimaru’s Autobiography of a Zen Monk (Hohm Press, 2022) and Philippe Coupey’s Zen Fragments: Teachings and Reflections of a Zen Monk in Paris (Hohm Press, 2024). He also edited Deshimaru’s Mushotoku Mind: The Heart of the Heart Sutra (Hohm Presss, 2012). His own books include John Fante: A Literary Portrait (Guernica Editions, 2000), No Fear Zen: Discovering Balance in an Unbalanced World (Hohm Press, 2015), and In Search of the Hermaphrodite: A Memoir (Tough Poets Press, 2024). Since 2016 he has been abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and now resides in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he directs Stone Nest Zen Dojo.
From Stone Nest
In the tradition of the ancient Chinese poets who went to the mountains to be closer to nature and themselves, Richard Collins delivers these dispatches from his mountain retreat called Stone Nest in Sewanee, Tennessee. As a Zen monk, teacher, and abbot, Collins pays tribute and attention to the art of nature and the nature of art, always with a questioning sensibility that asks: what more do the voices of mountains and waters have to tell us? How can we listen to and truly see what is all around us? How can we live our lives with authenticity and daring, yet with compassion and concern for all beings, sentient or not? Stone Nest explores the seasons of the mind and its responses to the seasons of a particular patch of land and the journey one has taken in time and space to settle there. How do poetry and painting, philosophy and religion, sensation and memory distort and disclose the gifts of the natural environment? The title captures the kind of comfort we can expect when we make a rugged landscape our home and meditation hall.
Available now: Shanti Arts
Contents
Chapbook Poem: When I Was Straight by Dustin Brookshire
“‘When I Was Straight’ prompted me to think about a common queer experience—how most parents assume their children are ‘straight’ and expect their children to live a ‘straight’ life.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: American Girl: Fort Hood, 2023 by Thea Matthews
“[W]eaving in and juxtaposing the lyrics of Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl.’ The song’s themes of desperation, wanderlust, and longing are subverted by Ana’s life and tragedy at Fort Cavazos, previously known as Fort Hood, Texas.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
“It seems such a shame that a beautiful location is just gathering dust and overgrowth, and I wanted to lean into the juxtaposition of that.” Read three poems by Bryana Fern along with a few words about “Women on the Wall.”
Bodies in Transition: Sacred & Perishable by Carissa Natalia Baconguis
“There is a muscular intimacy to the ecosystem of these poems, each one of them creating as vivid a world individually as exists in the collection as a whole.” Read Gray Davidson Carroll’s full review.
“In ‘No Breaks’ I was writing about something I hope I never have to experience. … I tried to keep despair at bay and show some defiance and resilience.” Read two poems by Gerald Yelle along with a few words about “No Breaks.”
November ’25: New Staff, Issue Archive & Donations
Read a note from Editor Aiden Hunt about our new Poetry Readers, the additions of an Issue Archive and a Contributor Fund, Fall poetry submissions, and Gaza.
Chapbook Poem: Two egrets at the edge of a tidal marsh by Rebekah Wolman
“Settling on the mirror form opened the way into the parallels between the original image of the egrets, their reflection, and their ambiguous relationship and the shifting, even reversing, roles of an adult daughter and her aging mother…” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for November 2025 along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Alexandra Burack
“Subsequent drafts enabled me to … uncover the metaphor of exile, whose meanings are intended to move readers from an experience of alienation to one of discernment of the liberating qualities of outsiderhood.” Read three poems by Alexandra Burack, along with a few words about “To Know Blue From the Color of Snow at Dusk.”
Book Excerpt: Rondo by Yamini Pathak
“The sculpture gardens are located on … the native land of the Lenape people. The poem is a conversation between sculpture, land, and its human and more-than-human inhabitants.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for November 2025, “Rondo” from Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps by Yamini Pathak, along with a few words from the poet.
Two Poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth
“As I shaped the poem, the olive trees became a witness to a deeper experience—to a region’s ongoing, collective pain. It was the land I wanted to make speak in a place where I did not have words.” Read two poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth, along with a few words about “Before.”
A Conversation with Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes
“We wanted something that was alive, highlighted an ever-expanding list of books by these poets, and that will hopefully survive the both of us and flourish under the curation of a fresh set of poets.” Read the full interview about the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook series.
Chapbook Poem: Red Tide by Mary Gilliland
“Reflection, research, a public service announcement, an old Zen koan, and 3 weeks of bicycling for groceries with a bandana tied around my nose and mouth inform ‘Red Tide’.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for December 2025, “Red Tide” from Red Tide at Sandy Bend, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Veronica Tucker
“’You Left the Fridge Open Again’ transforms an ordinary domestic moment into a meditation on tenderness and decay. The open refrigerator becomes a quiet altar, its hum a hymn to what lingers after love’s warmth has cooled.” Read three poems by Veronica Tucker, along with a few words about “You Left the Fridge Open Again.”
Book Excerpt: The Samadhi of Words by Richard Collins
“Zen poets, past and present, who experience deep absorption in the grandeur of this world may even gain wisdom through the way of poetry, Shidō (詩道). This is the samadhi of words.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for December 2025, “The Samadhi of Words” from Stone Nest by Richard Collins, along with a few words from the poet.
December ’25: Pushcart Prize Nominations
Editor Aiden Hunt announces Philly Chapbook Review’s 2026 Pushcart Prize anthology nominations in this editor’s note and provides links to, and a carousel of, the nominated poems.