What do you think?
Rate this book
Blizzard: Poems
Henri Cole, one of our greatest poets, explores the discordant nature of our condition on earth in Blizzard, his tenth collection.
“An artist of the greatest gifts.” —Louise Glück
Daring, tender, truthful, the poems in Blizzard, Henri Cole’s tenth book, build on a reputation for quiet mastery. Whether he is wrestling with the mundane, history and its disasters, or sexual love, he can sound both classical and contemporary, with the modern austerity of Cavafy and Bishop. Often exploring the darker places of the heart, his sonnets do not lie down obediently, but spark with an honest self-awareness.
Cole’s lucid, empathetic poems—with lyrical beauty and ethical depth—seem to transmute the anxious perplexities of our time.
“An artist of the greatest gifts.” —Louise Glück
Daring, tender, truthful, the poems in Blizzard, Henri Cole’s tenth book, build on a reputation for quiet mastery. Whether he is wrestling with the mundane, history and its disasters, or sexual love, he can sound both classical and contemporary, with the modern austerity of Cavafy and Bishop. Often exploring the darker places of the heart, his sonnets do not lie down obediently, but spark with an honest self-awareness.
Cole’s lucid, empathetic poems—with lyrical beauty and ethical depth—seem to transmute the anxious perplexities of our time.
80 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2020
17 people are currently reading
212 people want to read
About the author
Henri Cole
43 books93 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
September 6, 2020
This was my first experience with this poet and because of the themes, I imagine I should go backwards and read some of his earlier work too. I like how he references current politics and emotions.
My favorites:
Black Mushrooms (read on Shining Rock Poetry)
"...Sometimes,
when I'm suffocating from an atmosphere of restraint
within myself, I fry them up in butter, with pepper and salt,
and forget where the hurt came from. Instead, I experience
desire creating desire, and then some milder version
of a love that is temporary and guiltless, as if twigs
and bark were giving my life back its own flavor again."
Gross National Unhappiness
Rice Pudding
(the poems "about food" are not really about food, you know.)
I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. This collection came out September 1, 2020.
My favorites:
Black Mushrooms (read on Shining Rock Poetry)
"...Sometimes,
when I'm suffocating from an atmosphere of restraint
within myself, I fry them up in butter, with pepper and salt,
and forget where the hurt came from. Instead, I experience
desire creating desire, and then some milder version
of a love that is temporary and guiltless, as if twigs
and bark were giving my life back its own flavor again."
Gross National Unhappiness
Rice Pudding
(the poems "about food" are not really about food, you know.)
I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. This collection came out September 1, 2020.
November 11, 2020
With your fuzzy black face, do you see me—
a cisgender male—metabolizing
life into language, like nectar sipped
up and regurgitated into gold?
I think maybe my real subject is writing as an act of revenge
against the past
a cisgender male—metabolizing
life into language, like nectar sipped
up and regurgitated into gold?
I think maybe my real subject is writing as an act of revenge
against the past
October 23, 2020
"Blizzard is the perfect small tome for anyone who wants to get back in touch with one’s perceptions, and to do so while feeling closer to the mosses and herbs of the earth."
- You can read more of my thoughts on Henri Cole's Blizzard over at the Lambda Literary Review: https://www.lambdaliterary.org/2020/1...
- You can read more of my thoughts on Henri Cole's Blizzard over at the Lambda Literary Review: https://www.lambdaliterary.org/2020/1...
April 24, 2021
"Paris Is My Seroquel" and "At The Grave of Robert Lowell" were stellar poems. Powerful poetry.
June 22, 2020
I find that every now and then I need to add some poetry into my reads. I like the freshness they bring and I feel that I reset myself for my next reads. This poetry book delivered that and should be added to your poetry shelf. I think it will hit a chord with a lot of readers. I enjoyed the balance of uncomfortable moments with the exciting ones. So many things were explored in these poems - for example, friends, family, loved ones, loss, animals and bugs, and so much more.
Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a copy.
Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a copy.
March 8, 2023
It’s a great collection that explores many topics, some mundane and some thematically grand, there’s something for everyone and everyone can relate.
I enjoyed how he used everyday objects and moments to speak of a deeper meaning. It’s these moments that are the most relatable, and these thoughts that we all share but rarely express.
“… we were all just souls carrying around a corpse.” (p.49) What a killer line!
“… but memory of feeling is not feeling, a parasite is not the meat it lived on.” (p. 52) Wow.
I enjoyed how he used everyday objects and moments to speak of a deeper meaning. It’s these moments that are the most relatable, and these thoughts that we all share but rarely express.
“… we were all just souls carrying around a corpse.” (p.49) What a killer line!
“… but memory of feeling is not feeling, a parasite is not the meat it lived on.” (p. 52) Wow.
July 18, 2020
Name: Blizzard: Poems
Poet: Henri Cole
Genre: Poetry
Review:
This book is a collection of beautiful poetries and poems. His poems are lyrical, lucid and empowering. His words are daring, and they have a sort of cold rage filled in them. The poems drift through various topics like love, life, war, drugs, and many more. This book of poetry is more like a blizzard of emotions, which shakes us to the very last cell of our body. Expressive, elucidate and empathetic, this book will leave speechless.
Poet: Henri Cole
Genre: Poetry
Review:
This book is a collection of beautiful poetries and poems. His poems are lyrical, lucid and empowering. His words are daring, and they have a sort of cold rage filled in them. The poems drift through various topics like love, life, war, drugs, and many more. This book of poetry is more like a blizzard of emotions, which shakes us to the very last cell of our body. Expressive, elucidate and empathetic, this book will leave speechless.
March 18, 2023
BLIZZARD
As soon as I am doing nothing,
I am not able to do anything,
existing quietly behind lock and key,
like a cobweb’s mesh.
It’s 4 a.m.
The voices of birds do not multiply into a force.
The sun does not engross from the East.
A fly roams the fingers on my right hand
like worms. Somewhere, in an empty room, a phone rings.
On the street, a bare tree shadows a brownstone.
(Be precise about objects, but reticent about feelings,
the master urged.)
I need everything within
to be livelier. Infatuation, sadism, lust: I remember them,
but memory of feeling is not feeling,
a parasite is not the meat it lived on.
As soon as I am doing nothing,
I am not able to do anything,
existing quietly behind lock and key,
like a cobweb’s mesh.
It’s 4 a.m.
The voices of birds do not multiply into a force.
The sun does not engross from the East.
A fly roams the fingers on my right hand
like worms. Somewhere, in an empty room, a phone rings.
On the street, a bare tree shadows a brownstone.
(Be precise about objects, but reticent about feelings,
the master urged.)
I need everything within
to be livelier. Infatuation, sadism, lust: I remember them,
but memory of feeling is not feeling,
a parasite is not the meat it lived on.
August 1, 2020
The poetry style is good, it reads nicely. It's a weird contrast between the every day topics it talks about, and the deep meaning that the poetry itself is trying to accomplish. Not my favorite style.
Haiku and Blizzard are the ones I liked the most.
Haiku and Blizzard are the ones I liked the most.
November 11, 2023
Intimate, considered, and to the point. This is a patient, minimalistic collection of poems that takes commonplace objects, people, places, and events and transforms them into incredibly rich reflections despite their short word counts. This is a collection above anything else that's defined by how carefully and expertly its words are chosen, and in that sense is a late-career showcase for a poet in Henri Cole who's been at this forever and who has the skill to demonstrate it.
December 7, 2021
The world does need more poems about frying mushrooms in butter but does not need more poems about Donald Trump so this is net neutral for me. I liked the last section the most by a lot.
September 13, 2020
Blizzard by Henri Cole is a poetry collection of small, personal moments: catching a glimpse of deer grazing alongside the runway in the moment before takeoff, peeling potatoes, removing a bat from the house, watching workers erect a party tent. While the moments often show us a world where nature and speaker come face to face or sometimes collide — the aforementioned deer and bat, a snail carried to safer ground, mushrooms fried in butter — it’s also a world that moves outward from the small and the personal to broader concerns of art and politics.
In the first poem, for instance, “Face of the Bee,” the speaker directly addresses the bee as he is “waving my arms to make you go away,” but segues immediately from that singular intimate moment to “No one is truly the owner of his own instincts,/but controlling them — this is civilization.” And then it’s into personal history — “I thank my mother and father for this” and then art enters into the poem by circling back around to the bee imagery as the speaker “metaboliz [es] life into language, like nectar sipped up and regurgitated into gold.”
Cole continues to circle back to images and phrases and object/creatures, to echo them throughout the collection so that one poem often bleeds into another immediately after or soon to follow. As when, for instance, in “The Party Tent,” “a crew will remove the damaged sod,” while in the following poem “At the Grave of Robert Lowell, “he, she, all of them lie under sod.” Or when, in “Human Highway,” a “groggy back” flitting about in the backyard recalls to mind the “groggy bat” the speaker of “To a Bat” pick up to out “outside in a hydrangea bush.” There are many such echoes through Blizzard, leading us smoothly from one poem to the other, emphasizing a sense of interconnectedness, and lending a sense of unity to the voice so that one gets a sense of a singular, or at least narrower, self than sometimes arises out of a collection.
It’s a self that closely observes the world, who has a gentle, caring nature so that he will release that bat not just into the world but into a bush where it might rest and then launch itself from, or who in a moment of empathy for a snail also involved in the “long game, the whole undignified, insane attempt at living” moves it from the dangerous roadside to the woods.
As with any collection, the poems vary in their impact (and one’s mileage will vary as well most likely as to where particular poems stand in that sense). Most are relatively short (many sonnet length), and while I did highlight several lines that particularly struck me, there were fewer such moments than I would have preferred, with some of the poems therefore falling a bit flat for me. Cole shows a deft, subtle hand in his use of sound (note for instance the assonance and consonance in the line quoted above from “Face of the Bee”—the hard “I” of “lize, life, and like”, the soft and hard “g”s carrying us from “language” to “regurgitated” to “gold”). But it was the voice and persona I found myself responding most often to, with my favorite poems being when language and persona/voice both hit a strong note. One of my favorites, for instance, is “Departure,” where the speaker looks out the window while his plane is de-icing to see two deer: “the buck’s head is adorned with a forest /that renews itself each year,” one of those lines I highlighted. As the plane, a product of industry, is being rid of its dangerous frost coat, the deer, in their natural world, “wear an ice frock . . . the bottoms of their hooves listening to the frozen landscape.” A moment later, the speaker, his attention turned to the interior of the plane and his newspaper full of the human world, finds he cannot fully depart that moment: “What was that back there? Time is short. /If tenderness approaches, run to it.”
There is certainly worse advice out there. And that voice counseling tenderness, that eye so closely observant, makes Blizzard an easy collection to recommend, even if I wouldn’t have minded a bit more from the language itself.
In the first poem, for instance, “Face of the Bee,” the speaker directly addresses the bee as he is “waving my arms to make you go away,” but segues immediately from that singular intimate moment to “No one is truly the owner of his own instincts,/but controlling them — this is civilization.” And then it’s into personal history — “I thank my mother and father for this” and then art enters into the poem by circling back around to the bee imagery as the speaker “metaboliz [es] life into language, like nectar sipped up and regurgitated into gold.”
Cole continues to circle back to images and phrases and object/creatures, to echo them throughout the collection so that one poem often bleeds into another immediately after or soon to follow. As when, for instance, in “The Party Tent,” “a crew will remove the damaged sod,” while in the following poem “At the Grave of Robert Lowell, “he, she, all of them lie under sod.” Or when, in “Human Highway,” a “groggy back” flitting about in the backyard recalls to mind the “groggy bat” the speaker of “To a Bat” pick up to out “outside in a hydrangea bush.” There are many such echoes through Blizzard, leading us smoothly from one poem to the other, emphasizing a sense of interconnectedness, and lending a sense of unity to the voice so that one gets a sense of a singular, or at least narrower, self than sometimes arises out of a collection.
It’s a self that closely observes the world, who has a gentle, caring nature so that he will release that bat not just into the world but into a bush where it might rest and then launch itself from, or who in a moment of empathy for a snail also involved in the “long game, the whole undignified, insane attempt at living” moves it from the dangerous roadside to the woods.
As with any collection, the poems vary in their impact (and one’s mileage will vary as well most likely as to where particular poems stand in that sense). Most are relatively short (many sonnet length), and while I did highlight several lines that particularly struck me, there were fewer such moments than I would have preferred, with some of the poems therefore falling a bit flat for me. Cole shows a deft, subtle hand in his use of sound (note for instance the assonance and consonance in the line quoted above from “Face of the Bee”—the hard “I” of “lize, life, and like”, the soft and hard “g”s carrying us from “language” to “regurgitated” to “gold”). But it was the voice and persona I found myself responding most often to, with my favorite poems being when language and persona/voice both hit a strong note. One of my favorites, for instance, is “Departure,” where the speaker looks out the window while his plane is de-icing to see two deer: “the buck’s head is adorned with a forest /that renews itself each year,” one of those lines I highlighted. As the plane, a product of industry, is being rid of its dangerous frost coat, the deer, in their natural world, “wear an ice frock . . . the bottoms of their hooves listening to the frozen landscape.” A moment later, the speaker, his attention turned to the interior of the plane and his newspaper full of the human world, finds he cannot fully depart that moment: “What was that back there? Time is short. /If tenderness approaches, run to it.”
There is certainly worse advice out there. And that voice counseling tenderness, that eye so closely observant, makes Blizzard an easy collection to recommend, even if I wouldn’t have minded a bit more from the language itself.
January 13, 2025
“What a wondrous thing to suddenly be alive / eating Natalie’s lingonberry jam from Alaska”. In Blizzard, Henri Cole offers up poems oscillating between wonder and despair, from the joys of jam to the everyday horrors of the world: “In this tumultuous world we’re living in — / with the one-hour news loop — my thoughts / linger, more and more, on the darkish side”. Often, this spread can be covered, effortlessly, in a single poem. Cole’s writing on love and the body is so striking, painfully tender: “Instead, I experience / desire creating desire, and then some milder version / of a love that is temporary and guiltless, as if twigs / and bark were giving my life back its own flavor.” Elsewhere, Cole writes a natural world through various avenues, from the intimately animal in ‘To a Snail’, ’To a Bat’, ‘Pheasant’, to the more nebulous-yet-personal in ‘On Peeling Potatoes’, ‘Recycling’. But it’s the overall worldview that Cole espouses through these poems, and the sparkling way he does so, that most haunts me, exposes me: “It’s a long game — / the whole undignified, insane attempt at living”; “Sometimes, the empty languor / of the present is almost unbearable”; “memory of feeling is not feeling”; and “Time is short. / If tenderness approaches, run to it.” Interspersed in this study is that intersection between art and creativity that Cole synthesises perfectly, enchantingly: “metabolizing / life into language, like nectar sipped / up and regurgitated into gold”; “I rewrite / to be read”; and, in the genius final poem ‘Gay Bingo at a Pasadena Animal Shelter’, “I think maybe my real subject is writing as an act of revenge / against the past”.
September 23, 2022
[rating = B-]
Cole is a new poet to me, but it seems he has racked up a lot of accomplishments in his 60 years. This group of poems reads well and most try to capture one moment and use that moment to introduce other themes, like death or love and the like (you know, that "poetic" stuff). "On Peeling Potatoes" journeys back into the past, comparing this simple act for different generations and cultures. This is not only powerful but beautiful in its imagery.
His best Queer poems are the subtle ones like "Mud or Flesh." They sing in their simplicity and tell a story of love or lust without going overboard and trying to preach. He lets the story speak for itself and it humanizes his queerness (as a member of the LGBT community, these struck me especially).
Not all his poems hit home. Some don't seem to connect images just right or leave the reader without a sort of "ah-ha" or explanation of certain images or phrases. Yet, poetry doesn't need to be explained away, but it sometimes helps deliver what the author means. In all, there are poems to be re-read, and the way themes or images were linked throughout, marks Cole as a poet of consequence.
Cole is a new poet to me, but it seems he has racked up a lot of accomplishments in his 60 years. This group of poems reads well and most try to capture one moment and use that moment to introduce other themes, like death or love and the like (you know, that "poetic" stuff). "On Peeling Potatoes" journeys back into the past, comparing this simple act for different generations and cultures. This is not only powerful but beautiful in its imagery.
His best Queer poems are the subtle ones like "Mud or Flesh." They sing in their simplicity and tell a story of love or lust without going overboard and trying to preach. He lets the story speak for itself and it humanizes his queerness (as a member of the LGBT community, these struck me especially).
Not all his poems hit home. Some don't seem to connect images just right or leave the reader without a sort of "ah-ha" or explanation of certain images or phrases. Yet, poetry doesn't need to be explained away, but it sometimes helps deliver what the author means. In all, there are poems to be re-read, and the way themes or images were linked throughout, marks Cole as a poet of consequence.
April 24, 2024
Ich bin sehr froh, dass ich Henri Cole entdeckt habe, dank Paul-Henri Campbell und der Zeitschrift Volltext. Seine Gedichte sind von großer Klarheit und Eleganz, mit überraschenden Bildern und Einfällen. Eine Biene, die ihn stört, als er zum Frühstück eine Scheibe Toastbrot mit Marmelade bestreicht, inspiriert ihn zu folgendem Gedanken:
“Suddenly, I am waving / my arms to make you go away. No one / is truly the owner of his own instincts,/ but controlling them - this is civilization./ I thank my mother and father for this.”
Henri Cole ist ein empathischer Mensch. Kein Wunder, dass er einem komplett un-empathischen Menschen wie Trump Folgendes entgegenhält:
“No, I am not afraid of you / descending the long white marble steps / from a White Hawk helicopter / to a state-sponsored spectacle / of mansplaining and lies.”
Außerdem hat Henri Cole ganz offensichtlich Rilke gelesen (und zitiert einmal Hölderlin). Auf Deutsch gibt es eine zweisprachige Ausgabe von Blizzard in der Edition Lyrik Kabinett bei Hanser, der Übersetzer ist Henning Ahrens. Lyrik ist natürlich kaum „richtig“ zu übersetzen. Ich schätze Übersetzungen trotzdem. Ein Übersetzer von Gedichten überlegt bei jedem einzelnen Wort, wie er es am genauesten in die neue Sprache übertragen kann. Diesen spannenden Prozess kann man in einer zweisprachigen Ausgabe nachvollziehen, vor allem, wenn man die Ausgangssprache halbwegs beherrscht. Die Übersetzung hier ist aus meiner Sicht sehr gut.
“Suddenly, I am waving / my arms to make you go away. No one / is truly the owner of his own instincts,/ but controlling them - this is civilization./ I thank my mother and father for this.”
Henri Cole ist ein empathischer Mensch. Kein Wunder, dass er einem komplett un-empathischen Menschen wie Trump Folgendes entgegenhält:
“No, I am not afraid of you / descending the long white marble steps / from a White Hawk helicopter / to a state-sponsored spectacle / of mansplaining and lies.”
Außerdem hat Henri Cole ganz offensichtlich Rilke gelesen (und zitiert einmal Hölderlin). Auf Deutsch gibt es eine zweisprachige Ausgabe von Blizzard in der Edition Lyrik Kabinett bei Hanser, der Übersetzer ist Henning Ahrens. Lyrik ist natürlich kaum „richtig“ zu übersetzen. Ich schätze Übersetzungen trotzdem. Ein Übersetzer von Gedichten überlegt bei jedem einzelnen Wort, wie er es am genauesten in die neue Sprache übertragen kann. Diesen spannenden Prozess kann man in einer zweisprachigen Ausgabe nachvollziehen, vor allem, wenn man die Ausgangssprache halbwegs beherrscht. Die Übersetzung hier ist aus meiner Sicht sehr gut.
May 8, 2021
"Blizzard" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) is Henri Cole’s tenth book of poetry and one I read cover to cover — twice. Employing his unique style, this is a collection primarily of Cole’s characteristic sonnets, with each poem, every line, just as strong as the last. Not a word is wasted here, and each poem is so compact and alive, they seem almost autonomous beings. This meant that on my first reading, I felt witness to something extraordinary, compelled to let each poem simply wash over me. It was only on my slow, more careful, second read that I was able to inspect the specific elements of craft that make each poem — and thus the entire collection — such a meaningful experience. Then I found myself lost again — off down a tunnel of dissection, analyzing every individual poem, each of Cole’s rich lines. Such is the the hypnotism of the craft on display in this book.
October 7, 2022
In Blizzard, Henri Cole confronts the duality of life and death. This collection of sonnets moves between memories of dead friends and lovers, a wistful present, an unsettled natural world, and the cruel reality of human suffering. Common themes arise across poems - 4am birdsong as symbol of new life in early morning darkness, flies as a harbinger for decay - but they all connect to Cole's metaphysic reckoning with his own life and approaching death, cast against the life and death of lovers, friends, strangers, animals, beings. There is a certain comfort to be found in these poems, a comfort found in acknowledging the fundamental importance of love and human connection even when facing impermanence: "Remember death ends a life, but not a relationship" (Keep Me, 48).
Read
May 29, 2021"I think maybe my real subject is writing as an act of revenge / against the past"
"Suddenly, there is / trance, illumination, spectacle."
"A parasite is not the meat it lived on."
"Remember / death ends a life, not a relationship."
"I want my life to be borrowing and / paying back. I don't want to be a gun."
"Don't fear / nothing, their twittering voices cry. The true spirit"
"If tenderness approaches, run to it."
"Instead, I experience / desire creating desire, and then some milder version / of a love that is temporary and guiltless, as if twigs / and bark were giving my life back its own flavor."
"Suddenly, there is / trance, illumination, spectacle."
"A parasite is not the meat it lived on."
"Remember / death ends a life, not a relationship."
"I want my life to be borrowing and / paying back. I don't want to be a gun."
"Don't fear / nothing, their twittering voices cry. The true spirit"
"If tenderness approaches, run to it."
"Instead, I experience / desire creating desire, and then some milder version / of a love that is temporary and guiltless, as if twigs / and bark were giving my life back its own flavor."
May 21, 2020
Blizzard reveals a sense of jarring discomfort and disconnections in places and relationships yet simultaneously celebrates wondrous moments of kinship, belonging, and understanding. Juxtaposing internal and external states of being - in isolation, in love, in nature, in motion, while dreaming, at home, at rest - Cole peers into his own DNA and finds ancestors, family, friends, animals, insects, thunder, sunlight, music, war, peace, love, and loss. Reflections of universal truths, fears and desires will resonate with readers; this titles deserves it's place among every new poetry shelf.
July 30, 2025
". . . . . . . . . . . . . . The line between the inner
and outer erodes, and I become a hunter putting
my face down somewhere on a path between
two ways of being—one kindly and soft;
the other an executioner." ("Goya")
". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I carry on my shoulder
a bow and arrow for protection. I believe whatever
I do next will surpass what I have done." ("On Friendship")
and outer erodes, and I become a hunter putting
my face down somewhere on a path between
two ways of being—one kindly and soft;
the other an executioner." ("Goya")
". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I carry on my shoulder
a bow and arrow for protection. I believe whatever
I do next will surpass what I have done." ("On Friendship")
September 18, 2025
henri cole is my soft spot and this collection continues his streak of gentle, precise, and feeling poems. they invest in objects or phenomena that, in their slow unfolding, reveal themselves to be shot through with social weight--but are never reduced to vehicles of pure thought. they must be, by the end of the poem, safely deposited, handed off, or otherwise sustained. it makes the poems perfectly sonnetic : ) "sometimes, the empty languor / of the present is almost unbearable."
December 26, 2020
This is my first time reading any works by Henri Cole. I thoroughly enjoyed his focus on mundane and otherwise ignored anxieties that humanity tends to endure without realizing permanent comment. Looking forward to some of his earlier poems.
January 19, 2021
There's much simplicity in these poems, but they're deep, not simple. Cats, birds, potatoes, bingo, growing old, love, loss, America, and so much more. The kind of poetry you will turn to again and again.
“I think maybe my real subject is writing as an act of revenge
against the past”.
“I think maybe my real subject is writing as an act of revenge
against the past”.
April 2, 2022
"At The Grave of Robert Lowell," "To a Snail," "Paris is My Seroquel," and "On Peeling Potatoes" were especially top shelf. Loved the play on sonnet form and the focus on temporality and the eeriness and uncanny quality of the quotidian.
August 7, 2020
I enjoyed... two of the poems from this collection? Shrug.
March 31, 2021
Focus on poems is nature and environment, critters and plants, social justice.
April 24, 2021
"The true spirit
of living isn't eating greedily, or reflection, or
even love, but dissidence, like an ax of stone."
of living isn't eating greedily, or reflection, or
even love, but dissidence, like an ax of stone."
September 28, 2021
When William Logan says something positive about a book of poetry, I listen, but this book would have been a lot better if a third of the poems were left out.
February 13, 2022
These poems are best read one at a time and pondered, they are full of passion. My favorite is Man and Kitten.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews