Against Consolation

by Robert Cording

The title poem takes its name from a passage by Simone Weil, “We must not weep so that we may not be comforted.” But in this and other poems, Robert Cording offers a more hopeful vision of our ability to find consolation in the world we inhabit―a world endowed will offer endless spiritual possibilities, both in nature and within ourselves.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2001

Reviews

[Lenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew me away. All the poems in the book carry the themes. Even the long ones, ones that any poetry workshop would say are two or three poems and not one long poem, hang together with grace and skill. The musicality in the poems is awesome.

[Superstition Review · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Cording’s Against Consolation is a beautiful collection of poems that explore the intersection between humanity and physical landscape. This book is an invitation to confront and stay with your suffering, to allow nature to shape your pain into realness. Sunlight, birds, leaves—the imagery throughout Cording’s poems contain tangible fullness. Each poem is a love letter as much as it is a navigation of the strangeness and realness of life. In the springtime, the scent of lilacs pierce the air without meaning—a reminder of the “plenitude of the unintended.” What an amazing testament to the beauty of life and human fortitude that is rendered through our relationship to the literal and lyrical landscape of our worlds. As Cording says in his poem “Pause”, “I’d like to call it the plenitude of the unintended. The truth is, I don’t know if chance speaks or if the mind just cobbles together whatever it needs—but this world is full of accidental moments that can stop us in our tracks and wake in us again the strangeness we were born to.”

Review by Mary Lee