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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
August 15, 2011
*[Starred
Review] Cole's eighth book of poems may be his most sensitive (in the
manner of a compass needle), pointing as precisely as possible to the various sources of a lifetime's fragility and power.
THE NEW YORKER October 10, 2011
Like the messianic Walt Whitman ("I make holy whatever
I touch"), Henri Cole has spent his career tallying ecstatic and multifarious encounters with physical reality.
Such encounters permeate this sumptuous new collection of poems, in which Cole is to be found addressing a pig, a strand of
seaweed, and even a mosquito. A characteristic tone of awed ingenuousness...is one
Cole has learned from Blake and Bishop, though he also keeps an ear to the ground of contemporary speech, describing a torrential
downpour as "rain on steroids"..."How can I/defend myself against what I want?" Cole asks with voluptuous
candor, and leaves it to us to infer the answer. He can't, and neither can we.
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