Nothing to Declare: Poems

by Henri Cole

A bold new collection of poems of feral beauty and intense vulnerabilityThe poems in Henri Cole's ninth book, Nothing to Declare, explore life and need and delight. Each poem starts up from its own unique occasion and is then conducted through surprising (sometimes unnerving) and self-steadying domains. The result is a daring, delicate, unguarded, and tender collection. After his last three books—Touch, Blackbird and Wolf, and Middle Earth—in which the sonnet was a thrown shape and not merely a template, Cole's buoyant new poems seem trim and terse, with a first-place, last-ditch resonance. In their sorrowful richness, they combine a susceptibility to sensuousness and an awareness of desolation. With precise reliability of detail, a supple wealth of sound, and a speculative truthfulness, Cole transforms the pain of experience into the keen pleasure of expressive language. Nothing to Declare is a rare work, necessary and durable, light in touch but with just enough weight to mark the soul.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 31, 2015

About the author

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan and raised in Virginia. He has published many collections of poetry and received numerous awards for his work, including the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Award, and the Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent books are Orphic Paris, a memoir (New York Review Books), and Gravity and Center: Selected Sonnets, 1994-2022 (Farrar, Straus, Giroux). From 2010 to 2014, he was poetry editor of The New Republic. He teaches at Claremont McKenna College and lives in Boston.

Reviews

[abthebooknerd · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no idea what this man was trying to say. But there were a lot of references to genitalia.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henri Cole’s Nothing to Declare is an elusive work of verse: elusive in the sense of its influences are felt lightly, elusive in the complexity of the emotions it explores, and elusive in the lightness in the language. Indeed, these elusive qualities make the title of book somewhat ironic: “Nothing to Declare” is written in a declarative mode more than a descriptive one. Even some of the techniques of Cole’s observation are based on irony of beginning with declarations. Cole will often begin a poem with a cliché or almost banal bit of language rendered declaratively, such as “Lincoln at the State House”: ‘The war / had ended, but people only realized / what he meant to them / after he was dead” which rings like a sub-par documentary line, but Cole doesn’t let that be the end. He complicates the pedestrian quite quickly but without a heavy hand. His average line is trim and short, reminiscent in technique (but not style or tone) to a poet like Robert Creeley.

Cole has an eye for the surreal in the domestic and letting that surreal resonate as a representative of emotional ambivalence. He also allows nature into the poems quite often in a way that reminds this reader of Elisabeth Bishop with lines such as “probably only / an examiner / could distinguish / a raccoon’s bones” or describing a dog, “He prefers to give himself / up when hunted, rather / than soil himself. This is / civilization, I think, roughly / stroking his small ears.”

This is not always an effective poetics: this tendency to start with the banal and casual and move surreal can lead to extremely heavy-handed metaphors in otherwise very clear verse such as, ‘I can stay in one place, / detoxifying experience like a kidney.” These missteps, which are sometimes seemingly unintentionally funny, appear to come from Henri’s love of French surreal poetry which seem to no-so-elusively show up in his verse. Also his tendency towards “anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism” does seem to almost narcissistically reduce the natural world to elements of personal drama, which is hardly unique to Cole.

Cole creates a dense work that does not feel dense, a highly allusive work that does not call attention to itself, and a highly varied work that still feels of a singular voice. Strongly recommended.

[Michael Mingo · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher as part of a Goodreads giveaway. Neither the author, nor the publisher, nor Goodreads had any input regarding this review.)

Throughout this collection, I was impressed with how Cole's lines manage to sound light and effortless, yet pack loads of meaning into very little space. To borrow a phrase from the first poem, each line is "heavy, black, [and] frothing" with detail. Such efficient language makes each poem's scene apparent quickly, giving Cole's speakers plenty of time for discursive thoughts and syntactic play. The result is poem after poem that begs for third and fourth readings.

There are certain aspects of the collection that, on a macro level, don't quite work: the fixation on genitalia grows tedious, while the attempts at humor tend to fall flat (e.g., feeding a pelican "beside the sign that says: DO NOT FEED THE PELICAN" in "The Rock"). And the poem "Sphere," with its forced repetition of the word "black," is a minor disaster. But then I'll read something like the pairing of "War Rug" and "Hand Grenade Bag," which marry direct description and reflection so well, and those previous complaints start to feel trivial.

On the whole, I'm very glad to have read Cole's work, and I'd be interested in going through his back catalog at some point.

I've posted some additional, more detailed thoughts on two of the collection's poems, "City Horse" and "Dandelions," at my blog at this address: http://www.mgerardmingo.wordpress.com...

[Jackie Craven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning

A short collection with a long tail. I bookmarked so many of these poems, I can't say which is my favorite. The collection leaps from dandelions to wolves with a sequence of images that seems both startling and inevitable.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dazzling and precise lyric. I can'e believe I get to study under this guy this summer. What is life even.

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one way very difficult to rate; I was not as impressed as I hoped by many of the poems in the first section (although there were a few true standouts) but I absolutely loved the second section of the book.

These poems are austere while looking at lushness, rich while being drained, vibrantly still: like this stanza from "Lightning Toward Morning"

Probably only
an examiner
could distinguish
a raccoon's bones
from my own.

which really pares the text down to the smallest thing and brings it to a sort of mysterious life. In the best of these poems, there's a kind of starkness that makes even relatively long-lined poems like "City Horse" feel like trim little things that float down the middle of the page--"O wondrous horse; O, delicate horse--dead, dead-- / with a bridle still buckled around her cheecks--'She was more smarter than me, / she just wait,' a boy sobs, clutching a hand to his mouth". There is a kind of spotlight effect in many of these poems, where the shadows are somehow made sharper or washed away (depending on the tone of the piece) so that nothing feels quite like it looks in normal light--the world made too real to be real, perhaps.

The second half of the book has a shift from the first half in that themes of queerness (gayness?) crop up very strongly in poems like "Gelding.com," "The Boar Header", "Dandelions (II)", and "Anima" as these poems invoke desire for a man and work with complicatedly gendered speakers and contexts. This section is also where most of my favorite pieces were including all of the ones I just named, "The Rock", "Stampeding Buffalo," "The Constant Leaf", and "Stags". I also really liked (from part one) the two poems quoted above, "Dandelions," and "Free Dirt". The bareness of these poems makes them pretty different from a lot of what I often like, but they were still really beautiful and interesting pieces with some really fantastic imagery.

[Nuri · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't particularly enjoy this collection even though it's very well structured. Some poems have a hint of dark humour. Of the 28 poems in the book, the following three are the only ones I liked.

1.

"Englightement Means Living"

Writing this absorbed,
I realize that the words
are spilling all over
my legs, and I ask,
“Hey, what’s this?”

When I go
to the window,
the words come too
and are just all
over the place.

It’s as if my whole body
ceased to exist,
and I experience
the end of Henri
in an infinitude of words.

2.

"Anima"

After he came back,
I accidentally
made the sound

that meant I
belonged to him
and felt it

to be true.
It was a warm type
of feeling that would

have been unwise
to have outside
at night, but suddenly

it seemed I would
not be outside
ever again

where there had been
no time—just alive, or not—
in the shadows.

Now, there was
this new thing,
and, by day,

the sun accentuated
the feeling.
Then, in the moment

before it happened,
I thought, But I belong
to him.

Nevertheless,
it happened—
I died.

Though even dead,
some of me stayed
in bed with him

and couldn’t
believe it.
Just let me be

here forever,
it thought,
I'm not done.

3.

"The Constant Leaf"

It’s strange how the past holds on to us,
how the rapture of the lonely shore is agreeable only
if we can
at any moment escape it,
and how the night feels
so indispensable, soothing.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book of poems because I was hankering for some poetry, a meal’s worth, not a glut or a warehouse full. Henri Cole was born in Japan and has roots in France and the US and I was hoping that would inform some of the imagery. I am not sure I found any direct Japanese or European influences but his sparseness was what I craved.

Nothing To Declare has a very masculine perspective which I was surprised by. The choice of words and perspective seem have a film of grit. From my cozy chair I felt the need to shift my weight to get comfortable. So my pleasure level with these poems was more of a 3 1/2, but that is my own bias.

I do enjoy these lines:

I speak French with
a taxidermied wren.
There is no debt
between us. We listen
to language tapes

Viens-tu du ciel profound?

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Henri Cole's use of language - this collection has quite a bit of kind of queasy (my feelings) meditations on death (in the text) in his usual sparse, naturalistic style, sometimes funny, always very personal, but in a very meditative way. They're quiet things but powerful

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

“If I think, Where am I? I immediately feel, I am here!” (30).

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this

[k · Rating 1 out of 5]

i dont know what i read

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

How have I missed Henri Cole until now? This book was a gift, and I knew nothing about Cole until the first poem caught me in its undertow. He writes in a breathless, run-on style that feels like flood water pulling you along. Give into it. He’ll land you safely. I read his collection straight through, captive to his magic.

Because of Cole’s liquid language and thought, I forgive the run ons, even celebrate them. I suspect growing up in a home that spoke three languages honed his skill, allowing him to turn words loose to do what they want. Two of my favorite poems, “City Horse” and “Clepsydra,” deal with the aftermath of floods – perfect for his rush of language.

It’s rare to call attention to the book design as part of the magic, but the double spacing of these poems make it easier to stay focused. The white space gives you room to catch your breath.

Only Cole’s words can demonstrate why I love this book. The heartbreaking first poem, “City Horse,” is an ode to an unlikely subject: the corpse of a drowned horse, tied to a telephone pole, lying face down in the muck with a broken leg. It ends

“Oh wondrous horse; O, delicate horse – dead, dead –

with a bridle still buckled around her cheeks – ‘She was more

     smarter than me,

she just wait,’ a boy sobs, clutching a hand to his mouth

and stroking the majestic rowing legs,

stiff now, that could not outrun

the heavy, black frothing water.”

“Clepsydra” sounds like a Roman goddess, but is a water clock. In this poem, the narrator has been on his roof in a flood. Lying on his carpet, he

“…thanked my life

for letting me be here,
 

while Albert mewed

and licked my eyelids…”

The closing explains his choice of title

“When the wind howls

and a sea full of

compressed skulls


surges against

the windows,

we are all children.

It’s the oldest timepiece –

liquid dripping in a tub

until the little clay vessel

fills and sinks to the bottom,

and a bare hand plunges in

to empty and

float it again.”

[Dennis Bensie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. The poet makes this collection seem effortless --but we know it's not. This book is simply elegant. His images are so clear and uncluttered.
The poem "Dandelions" knocked me off my feet. Fantastic work.

[willowdog · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting by not many LGBT, poems search to be deep. Enjoyed some, found many to be searching for something to say.