In her debut poetry collection, Lee Kiblinger weaves an intricate tapestry through time and seasons, causing her readers to pause and admire each pulled thread and unifying pattern that emerges. All the Untils reimagines each moment of life as sacred, urging us to embrace every season we find ourselves living out. From experiencing the pain of waiting to receiving the joy of full-circle moments, Kiblinger’s poems stitch together a celebration of nows, laters, and thens.

How do you describe the nature of time? Kiblinger uses art to contemplate this very question throughout her collection. Consider, for example, her piece, “Still Life.” In it, Kiblinger describes a woman painting, and the central image of her work is “a pale skull/the careful sockets/reminiscent of that gray Golgotha.” Surprisingly, Psalm 131 is included as an epigraph to this piece, which famously includes the image of a weaned child content with their mother. This stark contrast, highlighting a symbol of death yet drawing attention to the childlike peace that is only possible through Christ, grounds her work in the tension of our finitude. Even in death, at the very end of our time, we can experience the beauty of a still and quiet soul. Again, we find artistic expression at the forefront of her exploration of our normal rhythms. “Underpainting” gives voice and validity to those in seasons of waiting and uncertainty as she introduces today as an “underpainting/in season’s scumblings.” While our stories are colored with dark and light moments, they transform with the passage of time into a richer and brighter image. This piece reimagines our natural response as creatures of schedules, timelines, and plans. Rather than wish away or ignore trying times, Kiblinger challenges us to receive each season with hopeful expectation. Every detail of our lives is surely a stroke of intentional brilliance made by a Master Painter.

Just as a viewer must consider the artist’s toil to fully appreciate the piece they are beholding, so too must we as humans honor the work it takes to value a difficult season as necessary and right. In “Threadbare,” Kiblinger intertwines the Lord’s Prayer with the speaker’s attempt to put to words their heart’s lament:

a few frail syllables flap
in the fraying of phrases

thy, the mended fabric
of prayer dangles

before come, a tendril tattered
in the waiting of what?

his will the elastic word
its pull back and forth

when done feels bound
but instead unravels…

This piece encapsulates the heart of the collection’s invitation: to willingly unknot our tightly bound expectations and yield to His timing. This work does not happen easily; we often must rip out the stitches we have unknowingly sewn into the fabric of our lives and submit our work to the better, often more difficult, pattern given to us. Yet, with our stitches unthreaded, we can find ourselves “tethered /in torn-up prayer.” Despite unraveling, we are still held and whole.

By knitting together contrasting strands of transition and stability, of grief and joy, and of tearing and mending, Kiblinger’s reflections evoke a humble response of surrender with each day, month, year, and season that passes for her readers. Whatever season of life you find yourself in, All the Untils will speak to your circumstances and invite you to behold the beauty of the in-betweens.

---

Buy Book

All the Untils by Lee Kiblinger
Resource Publications, May 2025
‎ 94 pages

Also available on Wipf & Stock

---

Danielle Page is a truth-teller and editor of the Clayjar Review. When she’s not reading, she’s scribbling in her journal or taking a hike. Her work has appeared in The Whale Road Review, Calla Press, As Surely as the Sun Rises, The Amethyst Review, and Ekstasis Magazine.