Henri Cole > Quotes

“There's no animal that sleep-deprives itself like the human.”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“I'm standing in the lake, forming a whirlpool with my arms, letting the force of atonement pull me into its center until I cannot any longer hang onto my observations or any sense of myself, like dust and hydrogen clouds getting all excited white creating new stars to light the backyard. How poignantly emptiness cries out to be filled.”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“Proximity to this death makes me nostalgic for the French language.”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“Introducing the idea of beauty as a salve and of aesthetics making something difficult accessible.”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“You see, my mind takes me far,
but my heart dreams of return.”
― Henri Cole, Pierce the Skin: Selected Poems, 1982-2007

“Words and phrases grew only slowly”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“I’m sorry I cannot say I love you when you say
you love me. The words, like moist fingers,
appear before me full of promise but then run away
to a narrow black room that is always dark,
where they are silent, elegant, like antique gold,
devouring the thing I feel. I want the force
of attraction to crush the force of repulsion
and my inner and outer worlds to pierce
one another, like a horse whipped by a man.
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 into a bowl.”
― Henri Cole, Blackbird and Wolf: Poems

“I feel like a jug in which wine is poured until it overflows.”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“the art of life, mostly, the art of avoiding pain”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“Experience seems to come from a distance.”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“My soft voice and demeanor were useless. In a pint jar, I carried a cremated friend, like flesh scraped from a cistern.”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“We all came from our mothers' bellies. We all have hope in our veins. We don't want history to forget us, but the dead look after the afterwards.”
― Henri Cole, Touch: Poems

“No poet worth the name can disregard his or her subjects, which come from the heart.” —”
― Henri Cole