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Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008
The inaugural volume in the new Spotlight poetry series, Where Shadows Will selects from twenty years of innovative poetry by writer, painter and translator Norma Cole. Cole has been a fixture of the Bay Area scene since 1977, writing melodic and experimental poetry whose shadow-haunted landscapes embody an exploration of the relationship between language, self and world. Cole was a member of the circle of poets around Robert Duncan and a fellow traveler of the language poets. Drawing on long out-of-print volumes and recent books—such as her acclaimed Spinoza in Her Youth (2002)— Where Shadows Will confirms Cole’s place as a major avant-garde poet and a leading voice among contemporary women writers.
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2009
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67 people want to read
About the author
Norma Cole
50 books15 followersNorma Cole is a poet, painter, and translator. Her most recent books of poetry include Fate News, Actualities, Where Shadows Will, and Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside. Her translations from French include Danielle Collobert’s It Then, the anthology Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France, and Jean Daive’s White Decimal. Cole lives and works in San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 1, 2016
Lana Turner
"Compatriot of a whole generation of French poets whose names are legion--Roubard, Hocquard, Claude-Royet, Collobert--Norma Cole is one of contemporary poetry's quintessential radicals; such a thing is thought beyond these shores. That her new book, Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 (City Lights books, 2009), confirms this beyond doubt. It seems a document of the intense skirmishes at the beginning of time, when tone was utterly impersonal, maximally capacious....Always political (seldom yet knowingly politicized, as in "'I Saw Shells...'") in its refusal to yield to the demands of a more strident poetics, her work is of a paradoxically pleasant and thoroughgoing antinomian difficulty. It hasn't given up on any ground gained."
—David Lau
Publisher's Weekly
"For the inaugural volume in its new Spotlight series, a sequel to City Lights' famous Pocket Poets line (in which Ginsberg's Howl first appeared), the publisher has chosen this retrospective collection by San Francisco poet Cole. A disciple of Robert Duncan, Cole casts her short poems in jagged verse and prose blocks, by turns abstract ("Imaginations law hits frames"), surreal (“Bark grew up over their faces”) and painterly in a manner that will be familiar to fans of Barbara Guest: “This is the image of effort.” Other pieces work more like disjunctive fables: one such prose poem describes how “A little of life simply escapes from a shallow dish.” Cole is far better known on the West Coast and in experimental poetry circles than anywhere else; in fact, her work is surprisingly accessible given its avant garde origins and ambitions—beautiful phrases and lines leap off the page (“Then his/ signature will have taken place,” reads one poem)—and this concise gathering of poems from her 15 small press books should bring Cole much deserved attention."
Midwest Book Review
"Some poets have a wide library of works, and you'll miss the brightest gems unless you look really closely. "Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008" takes the best of Norma Cole's work from over twenty years, and places it all in one collection as part of City Lights' Spotlight series. An excellent collection to start the series with, "Where Shadows Will" is a poetry reader's delight." —James A. Cox
Molossus
"Cole's verse ranges vastly in form and subject, with a large selection of prose poems. Her dialogue with contemporary French poetry is especially evident . . . Even with a half-hearted listen, it's easy to tell that Cole’s poetry is different. Where Shadows Will offers only the beginning of an introduction, a whetting of the palate."
"Compatriot of a whole generation of French poets whose names are legion--Roubard, Hocquard, Claude-Royet, Collobert--Norma Cole is one of contemporary poetry's quintessential radicals; such a thing is thought beyond these shores. That her new book, Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 (City Lights books, 2009), confirms this beyond doubt. It seems a document of the intense skirmishes at the beginning of time, when tone was utterly impersonal, maximally capacious....Always political (seldom yet knowingly politicized, as in "'I Saw Shells...'") in its refusal to yield to the demands of a more strident poetics, her work is of a paradoxically pleasant and thoroughgoing antinomian difficulty. It hasn't given up on any ground gained."
—David Lau
Publisher's Weekly
"For the inaugural volume in its new Spotlight series, a sequel to City Lights' famous Pocket Poets line (in which Ginsberg's Howl first appeared), the publisher has chosen this retrospective collection by San Francisco poet Cole. A disciple of Robert Duncan, Cole casts her short poems in jagged verse and prose blocks, by turns abstract ("Imaginations law hits frames"), surreal (“Bark grew up over their faces”) and painterly in a manner that will be familiar to fans of Barbara Guest: “This is the image of effort.” Other pieces work more like disjunctive fables: one such prose poem describes how “A little of life simply escapes from a shallow dish.” Cole is far better known on the West Coast and in experimental poetry circles than anywhere else; in fact, her work is surprisingly accessible given its avant garde origins and ambitions—beautiful phrases and lines leap off the page (“Then his/ signature will have taken place,” reads one poem)—and this concise gathering of poems from her 15 small press books should bring Cole much deserved attention."
Midwest Book Review
"Some poets have a wide library of works, and you'll miss the brightest gems unless you look really closely. "Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008" takes the best of Norma Cole's work from over twenty years, and places it all in one collection as part of City Lights' Spotlight series. An excellent collection to start the series with, "Where Shadows Will" is a poetry reader's delight." —James A. Cox
Molossus
"Cole's verse ranges vastly in form and subject, with a large selection of prose poems. Her dialogue with contemporary French poetry is especially evident . . . Even with a half-hearted listen, it's easy to tell that Cole’s poetry is different. Where Shadows Will offers only the beginning of an introduction, a whetting of the palate."
June 21, 2016
In the June Brooklyn Rail:
Norma Cole
Where Shadows Will
(City Lights, 2009)
Norma Cole
Natural Light
(Libellum, 2009)
Skipping beats—jumping textures, welcome to Norma Cole’s telescopic compressions of the “first person plural.” Whether it’s vernacular (“in your dreams”), (“tons of clouds”) or technical (“Anacoluthon”), (“More ’Pataphysics”) the poems probe language’s borders, blotting up spilled light.
Cole jumbles her subjects and then splices them into a “crosscut universe.” Process and form are alloyed into durable filigree. Line leads to line, word to word. The seams are generally recessed and sagacious, occasionally “dropping stitches” to inject astonishment.
Serial prose poems like “Artificial Memory 7” contrast with spare verse like “Allegory 10.” This presentational switching emphasizes Cole’s skill at subjective switching in which everything is part of a “subtext hard-pressed to find a resting place.” Yet there are respites, ambiences embedded in the relentless forward motion.
For me, a fluid lyricism is the glue in these ever-morphing, syntactically scintillating fountains: “all clipped together the fog cool dogeared it spotted with sparkles of light its heels.”
The “international memory” of Where Shadows Will, becomes “Collective Memory” in Natural Light. Here the fragments are fixed in their dispersed brokenness: “The nothing spread out all around.”
In “No Time at All” each isolated phrase reads like a separate performance in a matinee program. We are freed from narrative and delivered to the telling where “something blinked back.” The work is heroic — an “epic without story.”
Above all, “the poem is a toy” and Cole, an ideal playmate. Abandon despair all ye who enter here. “Verily, kiddo.”
Norma Cole
Where Shadows Will
(City Lights, 2009)
Norma Cole
Natural Light
(Libellum, 2009)
Skipping beats—jumping textures, welcome to Norma Cole’s telescopic compressions of the “first person plural.” Whether it’s vernacular (“in your dreams”), (“tons of clouds”) or technical (“Anacoluthon”), (“More ’Pataphysics”) the poems probe language’s borders, blotting up spilled light.
Cole jumbles her subjects and then splices them into a “crosscut universe.” Process and form are alloyed into durable filigree. Line leads to line, word to word. The seams are generally recessed and sagacious, occasionally “dropping stitches” to inject astonishment.
Serial prose poems like “Artificial Memory 7” contrast with spare verse like “Allegory 10.” This presentational switching emphasizes Cole’s skill at subjective switching in which everything is part of a “subtext hard-pressed to find a resting place.” Yet there are respites, ambiences embedded in the relentless forward motion.
For me, a fluid lyricism is the glue in these ever-morphing, syntactically scintillating fountains: “all clipped together the fog cool dogeared it spotted with sparkles of light its heels.”
The “international memory” of Where Shadows Will, becomes “Collective Memory” in Natural Light. Here the fragments are fixed in their dispersed brokenness: “The nothing spread out all around.”
In “No Time at All” each isolated phrase reads like a separate performance in a matinee program. We are freed from narrative and delivered to the telling where “something blinked back.” The work is heroic — an “epic without story.”
Above all, “the poem is a toy” and Cole, an ideal playmate. Abandon despair all ye who enter here. “Verily, kiddo.”
December 14, 2010
Although this is a terse "selected," the brevity of the collection helps to frame more sharply what Cole's exploration and endeavor has been. Reading through, Cole's intellectual rigor come through, but also the subtleties of her sense of humor. I hesitate to write more here because I'm working on a project in relation to this work, but I will say that I recommend this work for its challenge and the satisfaction that arises from stepping up to what the poetry asks, and asks of its readers in a worthy reciprocal exchange.
August 9, 2009
City Lights brought back to life via “the whole story of the light” set to music of “enormous rotating blades.” Poetry as algebra proving the theorem “that dictionary may be a companion to art but life/is the most sentimental thing there is.”
August 3, 2014
circumvolant
October 26, 2018
"one box falls out of another box, ashy covenant of separation" is a line "typical" of Norma Cole's style. It doesn't mean anything but it sounds like it means something. Her books are still hard to find in East Coast bookstores, even in NYC. I read quite a bit of early work online some years ago.
She's preoccupied with language but can't be classified as a language poet. Like the somewhat more conventional John Ashbery, she's very aware of the weight and music of words but her format and effect differ significantly. Like Breton or Crevel, she achieves surrealist goal "displacement" but she doesn't share surrealist poetry's glittering violent flamboyance. There is a calm measured quietness in her poems like Zukofsky et Mallarme./ This book is a good introduction to Norma Cole's poetry.
She's preoccupied with language but can't be classified as a language poet. Like the somewhat more conventional John Ashbery, she's very aware of the weight and music of words but her format and effect differ significantly. Like Breton or Crevel, she achieves surrealist goal "displacement" but she doesn't share surrealist poetry's glittering violent flamboyance. There is a calm measured quietness in her poems like Zukofsky et Mallarme./ This book is a good introduction to Norma Cole's poetry.
October 15, 2018
Norma Cole don't need no grammar.
Fear of strange places as the fear of not being able to find the way out.
- "He Dreams of Me"
A stranger of mine, he spilled his drink. I took it as a sign. My village was erased from the map.
- "Sumoud"
not to be seen is to be dead
- "Portuguese Rose, Winter's Rose"
Fear of strange places as the fear of not being able to find the way out.
- "He Dreams of Me"
A stranger of mine, he spilled his drink. I took it as a sign. My village was erased from the map.
- "Sumoud"
not to be seen is to be dead
- "Portuguese Rose, Winter's Rose"
October 29, 2009
Although there are many good poems among those collected here, I honestly appreciated Cole's book Natural Light(published around the same time & a few poems of which have been included in Where Shadows Will) more than I did this Selected Poems. Strangely, even the poems from Natural Light seem slightly diminished by their inclusion in this anthology (a Collected Works is a kind of anthology) Perhaps it's simply a change of context: more self-referential in that collected poems are intended to reflect the poet more explicitly than when let loose in the world in their original wrappings (as individual poems or books).
Also, my appreciation for Cole’s poems grew as time passed. That is to say, I like the more recent poems better than the earlier ones.
Also, my appreciation for Cole’s poems grew as time passed. That is to say, I like the more recent poems better than the earlier ones.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews