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    Blackbird and Wolf: Poems
    Blackbird and Wolf: Poems
    Blackbird and Wolf: Poems
    Ebook58 pages41 minutes

    Blackbird and Wolf: Poems

    By Henri Cole

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    About this ebook

    I don't want words to sever me from reality.
    I don't want to need them. I want nothing
    to reveal feeling but feeling—as in freedom,
    or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond,
    or the sound of water poured in a bowl.
    —from "Gravity and Center"

    In his sixth collection of poetry, Henri Cole deepens his excavations of autobiography and memory. "I don't want words to sever me from reality," he asserts, and these poems—often hovering within the realm of the sonnet—combine a delight in the senses with the rueful, the elegiac, the harrowing. Many confront the human need for love, the highest function of our species. But whether writing about solitude or the desire for unsanctioned love, animals or flowers, the dissolution of his mother's body or war, Cole maintains a style that is neither confessional nor abstract. And in Blackbird and Wolf, he is always opposing disappointment and difficult truths with innocence and wonder.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateAug 12, 2014
    ISBN9781466877757
    Blackbird and Wolf: Poems
    Author

    Henri Cole

    Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, to a French mother and an American father. He has published ten previous collections of poetry and received many awards, including the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and the Award of Merit Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has also published Orphic Paris, a memoir. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and teaches at Claremont McKenna College.

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    4/5

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    • 4/5
      A mournful and celebratory collection of poems, with some echoes of Dickinson.
    • 4/5
      Given to me by a friend from work as part of a book-themed Secret Santa exchange.

      It's been a long time since I've read a book of poetry. I've read the occasional poem here and there, from time to time, but there's a certain enjoyment to simply having the time to dedicate (part of) a morning to slowly going through the book, poem by poem, and thinking about each one.

      Most of Cole's poems are short, one-page (14-16 line) thoughts. In general, I liked his few longer poems better than the short ones – though I don't know if I can put my finger on precisely why, as the length itself doesn't have anything to do with it, I think.

      My favorite poem, on a first read through, is "The Erasers." My favorite set of lines, however, is from "Persimmon Tree":

      Poor Man, kind and apprehensive
      he looks at himself but cannot see
      the beauty of his free will unless
      he's suffering at the hands of it.

      My favorite line is from "Twilight": "I want to learn the faith of the indifferent."

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    Blackbird and Wolf - Henri Cole

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