Nothing to Declare Poems

by Cole, Henri

• ISBN13: 9780374222925
• ISBN10: 0374222924
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-03-31
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

A bold new collection of poems of feral beauty and intense vulnerability

The poems in Henri Cole's ninth book, Nothing to Declare, explore life and need and delight. Each poem starts up from its own unique occasion and is then conducted through surprising (sometimes unnerving) and self-steadying domains. The result is a daring, delicate, unguarded, and tender collection. After his last three books-Touch, Blackbird and Wolf, and Middle Earth-in which the sonnet was a thrown shape and not merely a template, Cole's buoyant new poems seem trim and terse, with a first-place, last-ditch resonance. In their sorrowful richness, they combine a susceptibility to sensuousness and an awareness of desolation. With precise reliability of detail, a supple wealth of sound, and a speculative truthfulness, Cole transforms the pain of experience into the keen pleasure of expressive language. Nothing to Declare is a rare work, necessary and durable, light in touch but with just enough weight to mark the soul.

Author Biography

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1956. He has published eight previous collections of poetry and received many awards for his work, including the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His most recent collection is Touch. He is the poetry editor of The New Republic and lives in Boston, where he is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.