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Loading... Blackbird and Wolf: Poemsby Henri Cole
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0374531129, Paperback)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. Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0374113793, Hardcover)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 poetry, Henri Cole deepens his excavations of autobiography and memory. “I don’t want words to sever me from reality,” he asserts, and these poems—often hovering within the realm of the sonnet—combine a delight in the senses with the rueful, the elegiac, the harrowing. Many confront the human need for love, the highest function of our species. But whether writing about solitude or the desire for unsanctioned love, animals or flowers, the dissolution of his mother’s body or war, Cole maintains a style that is neither confessional nor abstract. And in Blackbird and Wolf, he is always opposing disappointment and difficult truths with innocence and wonder. Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, and was raised in Virginia. The recipient of many awards, he is the author of Middle Earth, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and The Visible Man. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts. A Quill Book Award Finalist In his sixth collection of poetry, Henri Cole deepens his excavations and examination of autobiography and memory. "I don't want words to sever me from reality," he asserts, and these poems—often hovering within the realm of the sonnet—combine a delight in the senses with the rueful, the elegiac, and 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. "Henri Cole's spare new book is a meditation serving as memoir—scenes come and go; parents fade away; the poet takes sidelong glances at his aging, graying face in the mirror. Blackbird and Wolf shows the confidence of a poet no longer struggling toward expression . . . The psychological nuance of these images shows the botanical eye of Plath."—William Logan, The New Criterion "Sunny landscapes long dominated pastorals, marred by the occasional thunderstorm that served to clear the air and engender a rainbow—think of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. By the late 19th century, ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ had infringed upon those green fields and shady groves. Henri Cole tranquil vistas are dappled with a chiaroscuro of pain. His sixth collection, Blackbird and Wolf, strives to reconcile our tempestuous interior feelings and urges with the spontaneity of beasts and flowers . . . Eschewing the traditions of Virgil or of Wordsworth, Cole's idiom is more reliant on Ovidian metamorphoses that pair horror with renewal. He combines scientific processes (those digesting enzymes or the evolution of species) with mythic concepts. In 'Eating the Peach,' the pit 'resembles / a small mammal's skull,' taking him along a recapitulation of biological development that also echoes the fall of man . . . In his dogged attempts to embrace nature’s apparent grotesqueries, Cole approaches the sublime that Wordsworth defined as a mixture of awe and terror. 'Even when the world seems just a heap of broken things,' he strives to make sense of the natural and emotional intricacies that cause pleasure and pain. Blackbird and Wolf is Cole's most moving book to date."—Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader "In his sixth book, Cole wants to write 'something highly controlled / that is the opposite,' and he succeeds. Once a poet of great formal control and dense, sometimes inscrutable lines, Cole now writes simply and sparely, mixing autobiography, eros and the natural world in a voice that buzzes with emotion. Single-lined stanzas accentuate the poems' spareness, placing great pressure on each line. Cole can devastate ('I'm sorry I cannot say I love you when you say / you love me,'), declaim in deadpan ('I have a fever which I'm treating with gin') or plainly declare ('I'm tired of just being a man'). Many poems look grief in the face, addressing a dying mother, an ex-lover, flowers and animals, an absent god, the disappointing self, even the 43rd president, with whom Cole admits to a degree of fellowship—a rare sentiment these days, especially in poems—a common fear of 'some unbroken animal / circling in the dark wood.' There are a very few moments when the feeling drains, but mostly this intimate, honest voice surprises. Poetry 'is stronger / than I am and makes me do what it wants,' Cole writes of the bullying that has produced his best book to date."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) (retrieved from Amazon Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:53:28 -0500) |
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