Middle Earth Poems

Time was plunging forward, like dolphins scissoring open water or like me, following Jenny's flippers down to see the coral reef, where the color of sand, sea and sky merged, and it was as if that was all God wanted: not a wife, a house or a position, but a self, like a needle, pushing in a vein. -from "Olympia" In his fifth collection of verse, Henri Cole's melodious lines are written in an open style that is both erotic and visionary. Few poets so thrillingly portray the physical world, or man's creaturely self, or the cycling strain of desire and self-reproach. Few poets so movingly evoke the human quest of "a man alone," trying --to say something true that has body, because it is proof of his existence.. .Middle Earthis a revelatory collection, the finest work yet from an author of poems that are . . .marvels-unbuttoned, riveting, dramatic-burned into being-- (Tina Barr,Boston Review). Henri Colewas born in Fukuoka, Japan, and was raised in Virginia. The recipient of many awards, including the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Middle Earth, he is the author of six other books of poetry. Winner of the 2004 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize ANew York TimesNotable Book ALos Angeles TimesBest Book In his fifth collection of verse, Henri Cole offers elegant, melodious lines composed in an open style that is both erotic and visionary. Few contemporary poets so thrillingly illuminate the physical world, and few so movingly evoke the human quest of "a man alone," trying "to say something true that has body, / because it is proof of his existence." Cole, born in Japan, here draws on austere and resonant images from the art and landscape of that country as he investigates creaturely existence, its cycles of desire and self-reproach, and its conflict of need and delight. Equally at ease with candor and passion and repose, formally hovering within the aura of the sonnet, these poems suggest uncertainty and doubt in language nothing short of revelatory.Middle Earthis the finest book yet from a poet who works are "marvelsunbuttoned, riveting, dramaticburned into being" (Tina Barr,Boston Review). Winner of the 2004 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award "These are the poems of a conjurer, ceremonial and hypnotic . . . This collection marks the birth of Cole, a writer in his late 40s, as a poet for a wider audience. He displays his sense of humor and takes an unguilty pleasure in his visions."Los Angeles Times Book Review "This is the most intimate book in American poetry since Plath'sAriel. . . Cole's new poems, proud and knowing and wounded, archly suspicious, can be revealing because they guard their privacies so well.Middle Earthescapes all the praise I can heap upon it."William Logan,The New Criterion "Middle Earthis Henri Cole's epiphany, his Whitmanesque sunrise. The modulation of these poems is extraordinary: they have a continuous undersong. 'It must give pleasure,' Wallace Stevens said. So oxymoronic is pleasure-pain, in Henri Cole, that we need to modify Stevens. But for now, poems like 'Icarus Breathing,' 'Original Face,' and 'Olympia' are the poems of our climate. Henri Cole has become a master poet, with few peers . . . A central poet of his generation."Harold Bloom "These are the poems of a conjurer, ceremonial and hypnotic . . . This collection marks the birth of Cole, a writer in his late 40s, as a poet for a wider audience. He displays his sense of humor and takes an unguilty pleasure in his visions . . . [Cole] is also a remarkable fabulist, now writing the poems of his career."Dan

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, and was raised in Virginia. The recipient of many awards, he is the author of four previous books of poems, most recently The Look of Things (1995) and The Visible Man (1998). He is poet-in-residence at Smith College.