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Middle Earth: Poems
The fullest culmination to date of an original voice and “a central poet of his generation” (Harold Bloom)
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
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 Earth is 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 ).
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
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 Earth is 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 ).
57 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Henri Cole
43 books96 followersHenri 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 11, 2024
This book of poems touches our common experiences of life while remaining deeply private; Henri Cole does a beautiful job balancing both polarities. The poems in this book will help you identify deeper feelings you may have avoided looking at for some time. Always happy to be introduced to a new poet with a strong voice.
April 29, 2021
“I purport to desire. But when you open
your eyes shyly and push me on the shoulder,
all I am is impulse and longing
pulled forward by the rope of your arm,
I, flesh-to-flesh, sating myself
on blurred odors of the soft black earth.” - Stanza from “Blur”
Another outstanding collection of poems by Henri Cole. Second one I’ve read this year.
your eyes shyly and push me on the shoulder,
all I am is impulse and longing
pulled forward by the rope of your arm,
I, flesh-to-flesh, sating myself
on blurred odors of the soft black earth.” - Stanza from “Blur”
Another outstanding collection of poems by Henri Cole. Second one I’ve read this year.
January 22, 2008
Henri Cole, Middle Earth (FSG, 2003)
First off, let's get this out of the way: this book has no ties whatever to Tolkein.
That said, it was the first proof I've ever had of an urban legend I've been hunting down for years. Skim through the Poet's Market sometims and look at the descriptions of the things magazine editors don't want. Most of them come down to one basic description said in a thousand ways: "pointless academic tripe." A few have, in the past, named names, but the names most often named I never thought of as all that pointless, some of them downright enjoyable. (But then, I'm an imagist, and from my POV the image is its own point in any decent poem.) Most of the "tell, don't show" poems, which are the very definition of pointless, don't fit the academic part of the puzzle.
Then I discovered the work of Henri Cole, and for the first time, I understood what all those editors are on about.
Archibald MacLeish once wrote that "a poem should not mean, but be." Cole, on the other hand, wants desperately to invest every word with meaning (instead of letting the words invest themselves with meaning, as any good poem does), and while in some existentialist sense they do achieve being, there is no life behind them.
The main problem here is that it seems Henri Cole has never met an image he liked. He's too busy floundering around in the world of vagueness to give the reader anything to latch onto, resulting in tortured lines like "Heart, unquiet thing/I don't want to hate any more. I want love/to trample through my arms again." ("My Tea Ceremony") It's not like we haven't read the same thing from a hundred thousand high-school-age teen-angst poets. Or the painful thud of perhaps the collection's worst line, "Tears represent how much my mother loves me" ("Self-Portrait in a Gold Kimono"). It would barely fly in a James Joyce novel; there is nothing at all poetic about it. * ½
First off, let's get this out of the way: this book has no ties whatever to Tolkein.
That said, it was the first proof I've ever had of an urban legend I've been hunting down for years. Skim through the Poet's Market sometims and look at the descriptions of the things magazine editors don't want. Most of them come down to one basic description said in a thousand ways: "pointless academic tripe." A few have, in the past, named names, but the names most often named I never thought of as all that pointless, some of them downright enjoyable. (But then, I'm an imagist, and from my POV the image is its own point in any decent poem.) Most of the "tell, don't show" poems, which are the very definition of pointless, don't fit the academic part of the puzzle.
Then I discovered the work of Henri Cole, and for the first time, I understood what all those editors are on about.
Archibald MacLeish once wrote that "a poem should not mean, but be." Cole, on the other hand, wants desperately to invest every word with meaning (instead of letting the words invest themselves with meaning, as any good poem does), and while in some existentialist sense they do achieve being, there is no life behind them.
The main problem here is that it seems Henri Cole has never met an image he liked. He's too busy floundering around in the world of vagueness to give the reader anything to latch onto, resulting in tortured lines like "Heart, unquiet thing/I don't want to hate any more. I want love/to trample through my arms again." ("My Tea Ceremony") It's not like we haven't read the same thing from a hundred thousand high-school-age teen-angst poets. Or the painful thud of perhaps the collection's worst line, "Tears represent how much my mother loves me" ("Self-Portrait in a Gold Kimono"). It would barely fly in a James Joyce novel; there is nothing at all poetic about it. * ½
September 28, 2017
Come to the garden, you said,
and I went, hearing my voice inside
your throat. It was a way of self-forgetting.
Or it was a way of facing self,
I did not know.
*
Who were you
that even now all of me is in tatters,
aching to touch your face floating in a dream,
defining itself, like a large white
flower, by separation from me?
*
[…] all I am is impulse and longing
and I went, hearing my voice inside
your throat. It was a way of self-forgetting.
Or it was a way of facing self,
I did not know.
*
Who were you
that even now all of me is in tatters,
aching to touch your face floating in a dream,
defining itself, like a large white
flower, by separation from me?
*
[…] all I am is impulse and longing
May 28, 2019
VEIL
We were in your kitchen eating sherbet
to calm the fever of a summer day.
A bee scribbled its essence between us,
like a minimalist. A boy hoed manure
in the distance. The surgical cold of ice
made my head ache, then a veil was lifted.
Midday sprayed the little room with gold,
and I thought, Now I am awake. Now
freedom is lifting me out of the abyss
of coming and going in life without thinking,
which is the absence of freedom. Now I see
the still, black eyes saying, Someone wants you,
not me. Now nothing is hidden. Now,
water and soil are striving to be flesh.
We were in your kitchen eating sherbet
to calm the fever of a summer day.
A bee scribbled its essence between us,
like a minimalist. A boy hoed manure
in the distance. The surgical cold of ice
made my head ache, then a veil was lifted.
Midday sprayed the little room with gold,
and I thought, Now I am awake. Now
freedom is lifting me out of the abyss
of coming and going in life without thinking,
which is the absence of freedom. Now I see
the still, black eyes saying, Someone wants you,
not me. Now nothing is hidden. Now,
water and soil are striving to be flesh.
March 4, 2019
Henri Cole's Middle Earth is largely about the idiosyncrasies of modern life, and if one is not used to Cole's style and general affectations, the melancholy-tone and bookish references, can be off-putting. The poems are minimal, often told in single line stanzas, which touch on familial and sexual alienation. Most of the poems are unrhymed and unmetered sonnets, although the form's use of voltas is maintained by Cole. Cole's gift of mixing lush language with spare form really shine here.
Read
February 24, 2024Superb poems by a superb poet who writes of entering middle age— Cole is thoughtful, with interesting ideas, and the opposite of flashy.
January 2, 2018
I liked Middle Earth quite a bit. It was smart, sharp, and intriguing. It was also a bit melancholy, which was perhaps not exactly what I wanted for the new year, but still a pleasant read. The poems are largely sparse, pointed pieces that deal with family, loss, aimlessness, and sexuality, often with a subtle softness that makes it unclear to what extent the poems are confronting the material that makes them up. Many of the poems are free-form "sonnets," no rhyme, 14 lines, only the slightest semblance of the sonnet's typical internal structure--examples and response or problem/resolution. My favorite poem was probably "Kyushu Hydrangea":
The poems are all this particular mix of spare and lush and active and reflective, making for a read that is fluid and engaging. I don't know that I agree with Cole--there is a touch too much emptiness in the poems for me--but I like him; and I'd rather too much emptiness than an overabundance that excludes the possibility of the human (I don't like the Transcendentalists, for example). A lovely and interesting collection of poems, even if it doesn't quite reach perfection.
Some say there are too manyI also particularly liked "Blur" (although that may be the most melancholy poem), "Self-Portrait in a Gold Kimono," "Middle Earth," "Self-Portrait as the Red Princess", and "Snow Moon Flower".
for a charity hospital, too many pale
pink blossoms opening into creamy
paler ones, just when everything else
is dying in the garden. They can't see
the huge, upright panicles correspond
to something else, something not external at all,
but its complement, that atmosphere of pure
unambiguous light burning inwardly,
not in self-regard but in self-forgetting;
they can't see the lush rainy-season flowers
with feet planted partially in rock,
lifting their big solemn heads over
the verdant wounded hands of the leaves.
The poems are all this particular mix of spare and lush and active and reflective, making for a read that is fluid and engaging. I don't know that I agree with Cole--there is a touch too much emptiness in the poems for me--but I like him; and I'd rather too much emptiness than an overabundance that excludes the possibility of the human (I don't like the Transcendentalists, for example). A lovely and interesting collection of poems, even if it doesn't quite reach perfection.
October 15, 2016
Henri Cole has collected here a set of poems that I am alternately dawn to describe as either very subtle or very timid. In the background lurks reference to flesh and sex that never quite materializes in the poetry. It’s the opposite of what I would call visceral. Not quite sure what to do with these or what he intended; despite the occasional flash of an enduring image, the collection as a whole always falls short of that (in the words of the immortal Donald Trump) pussy-grabbing moment. That said, I was intrigued enough to read more.
March 7, 2013
I have come back to this beautiful volume once again, and it is always startling and fresh. Such a great way to remember the qualities in good poems that I want to remember as I write prose."Cleaning the Elephant" is one of my favorites.
July 2, 2026
If the meaning of life is love, no one seems to be aware,
not even Mary and Joseph, exhausted with puffy eyes,
fleeing their dim golden crib.
-- "Presepio"
I cannot tell which of us absorbs the other more;
I am free but you are not,
if freedom means traveling long distances to avoid boredom.
-- "Ape House, Berlin Zoo"
I envied her crisp linearity, as she galloped
slow motion onto my chest, but then she started
mimicking me, lifting her arms in an attitude
of a scholar thinking or romantic suffering.
"Stop!" I sighed, and she did, flying in a wide arc,
like a tiny horse-god hunting for her throne room.
-- "Pillowcase with Praying Mantis"
not even Mary and Joseph, exhausted with puffy eyes,
fleeing their dim golden crib.
-- "Presepio"
The past dims like a great, tiered chandelier.
-- "Middle Earth"
I cannot tell which of us absorbs the other more;
I am free but you are not,
if freedom means traveling long distances to avoid boredom.
-- "Ape House, Berlin Zoo"
This is a poem.
Is this a table? No, this is a poem. Am I a girl?--
seeking out the meat-hook crowd I once loathed,
I'm so afraid to find myself alone.
-- "Black Camellia (After Petrarch)"
all that I am is borne and is effaced
by a herd of deer gathered in the meadow
-- "Landscape with Deer and Figure"
I envied her crisp linearity, as she galloped
slow motion onto my chest, but then she started
mimicking me, lifting her arms in an attitude
of a scholar thinking or romantic suffering.
"Stop!" I sighed, and she did, flying in a wide arc,
like a tiny horse-god hunting for her throne room.
-- "Pillowcase with Praying Mantis"
August 5, 2021
In the age of insta-poets, I have been turning more and more back to the classic poets and the beats to hide from the wanna be s and the near poets emerging on the insta scene. So I've shied away from recent poetry books. However this little gifted to me book is what I've longed for lately. No it doesn't contain Hobbits as my sister insisted it must have from the title, but it has profound, blood drawing depth and emotion. Enough to melt my frozen heart. I loved it and am searching now for more of this poet.
July 2, 2019
I liked this. The writing was very pure, clear. There was a stillness to this collection, reflected by it's Japanese influence.
Icarus Breathing
"A big wave makes my feet slither. I feel like a baby,/ bodiless and strange: a man is nothing if he is not changing./ Father, is that you breathing? Forgiveness is anathema to me./ I apologize. Knock me to the floor. Take me with you."
Icarus Breathing
"A big wave makes my feet slither. I feel like a baby,/ bodiless and strange: a man is nothing if he is not changing./ Father, is that you breathing? Forgiveness is anathema to me./ I apologize. Knock me to the floor. Take me with you."
November 2, 2019
“...the same pathos I feel when I tell myself, within or without valid structures of love: I have been deceived, he is not what he seemed—though the failure is not the other, but in me because I am tired, hurt or bitter” (Kayaks, 9).
January 16, 2021
“I repeat things in order to feel them, / craving what is no longer there.”
“[...] it was not the self against time / or the self blurred by flesh, it was the self / living without any palpable design.”
“[...] it was not the self against time / or the self blurred by flesh, it was the self / living without any palpable design.”
February 19, 2024
Intelligent and unusual
Fabulous poems that are both cerebral and sensual. These poems manage to ask deep questions while placing the reader in a zoo or a Venetian green or face to face with koi. WONDERFUL
Fabulous poems that are both cerebral and sensual. These poems manage to ask deep questions while placing the reader in a zoo or a Venetian green or face to face with koi. WONDERFUL
October 13, 2025
I read this book of poems the summer after my dad died and it was something I needed at the time. Largely free verse, evocative imagery. Poetry as emotionally evocative storytelling. Swans is still a favorite. "What we had in common had been severed from us."
December 9, 2017
Not my style.
April 14, 2019
Not much that stood out to me.
The title piece and "Olympia" are my favorites in this collection.
If God is around, he seems ineffectual.
- "Presepio"
The title piece and "Olympia" are my favorites in this collection.
If God is around, he seems ineffectual.
- "Presepio"
June 26, 2020
"i eat tiny marzipan men at the bakery;
desire & disgust get mixed up."
desire & disgust get mixed up."
March 19, 2022
this book is perfect
July 4, 2024
A remarkable collection of poems. The final 6 poems, titled “Blur”, I read several times and will undoubtedly return mesmerized in the future.
February 10, 2022
Not my flavor
March 3, 2017
more tired poetry about modern life, I simply dont care
January 17, 2015
"Who were you / that even now all of me is in tatters, / aching to touch your face floating in a dream, / defining itself, like a large white / flower, by separation from me?"
"I cannot tell who absorbs the other more; / I am free but you are not, / if freedom means traveling long distances to avoid boredom."
"I cannot tell who absorbs the other more; / I am free but you are not, / if freedom means traveling long distances to avoid boredom."
January 1, 2008
I have never read Henri Cole before I saw his poem in this week's New Yorker so I sought out a book. He has some amazing lines, lines I envy but I also find myself wanting a little bit more from him---granted I read the Gluck chapbook first so I may be tainted.
Read
February 23, 2007his best
July 27, 2007
Very good.
Want to Read
April 11, 2009A christmas/birthday/special occasion gift from the Varg. Beautiful, exotic, and so much more. Thanks Varg.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews