Much like Sylvia Plath or Edgar Allan Poe, Cole's poetry is drenched in the occult of the everyday. These poems confront grief and rage head on, whether directed toward memory ("Mimosa Sensitiva") or reality ("To the Forty-third President.") This Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet (for Middle Earth) has a truly fascinating voice, one that borders the mystical baroque but is thoroughly contemporary.

I don’t want words to sever me from reality.
I don’t want to need them. I want nothing
to reveal feeling but feeling—as in freedom,
or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond,
or the sound of water poured in a bowl.

—from “Gravity and Center”

In his sixth collection of verse, Henri Cole deepens his excavations and examinations of autobiography and memory. These poems—often hovering within the realm of the sonnet—combine a delight in the senses with the rueful, the elegiac, the harrowing. Central here is the human need for love, the highest function of our species. Whether writing about solitude or unsanctioned desire, animals or flowers, the dissolution of his mother’s body or war, Cole maintains a style that is neither confessional nor abstract, and he is always opposing disappointment and difficult truths with innocence and wonder.

“[Cole writes] in a voice that buzzes with emotion . . . His best book to date.” —Publishers Weekly

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, and was raised in Virginia. The recipient of many awards, he is the author, most recently, of Middle Earth (FSG, 2003), a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and The Visible Man (FSG, 1998).

Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Distributor: MPS
Publication Date: 03-18-2008
Pages: 80
Measurements: 8.25in X 5.50in