Middle Earth: Poems

by Henri Cole

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 ).

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Nonfiction, Queer

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

“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.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

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

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Carla]

Superb poems by a superb poet who writes of entering middle age— Cole is thoughtful, with interesting ideas, and the opposite of flashy.

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

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":

Some say there are too many
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.

I 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".
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.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Mary Rakow · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

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."

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

“...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).

[Alex Kennell · Rating 5 out of 5]

“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.”

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Sydney M · Rating 4 out of 5]

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."

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my style.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

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"

[silas denver melvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

"i eat tiny marzipan men at the bakery;
desire & disgust get mixed up."

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is perfect

[Chad Lueck · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable collection of poems. The final 6 poems, titled “Blur”, I read several times and will undoubtedly return mesmerized in the future.

[Bethamphetamine Crawfish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my flavor

[Brian Wasserman · Rating 1 out of 5]

more tired poetry about modern life, I simply dont care

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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."

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Adam]

his best

[Jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

More here: [http://www.robertpeake.com/archives/3...]

[Heather scarlett victoria]

A christmas/birthday/special occasion gift from the Varg. Beautiful, exotic, and so much more. Thanks Varg.

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Add Henri Cole to my list of poets to collect and follow.