Customer Reviews

The Look of Things: Poems

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I gravitate towards poems in which the space between the poet and the poem is small. I like to feel the heat of the poet's own breath as I read, hear their voice crescendo at lines that I feel the most. The great strength of Henri Cole's collection "The Look of Things" is his ability to observe things from far distances while simultaneously making the reader intimately feel his presence. It is this balancing act that his skills as a poet are at their sharpest. As quiet as many of these poems are, the poet stays embodied, as though every beautifully sculpted line were an extension of his very self. He can describe a beach he sees from far away, or a café he passes by, yet it is as though he describing these places and disparate events from their core and not from a place outside. The poet frequently melts away into his subjects, yet somehow keeps the boundary between the two clear. I do not quite understand how he does this, but I am trying. It was only on a second reading of many of the poems in this collection that I noticed many of Cole's formal choices. Sometimes, for example, when a poet uses end-rhymes, the form of the poem is always in danger of overshadowing its substance. But it is made clear in poems like "Torso", and "The Roman Baths at Nimes" and the title poem of the collection that Cole is adept at serving a poem with formalistic elements and not merely using them to dress it up. The beauty of these poems is of such an intense immediacy and I encourage those unfamiliar with this poet to experience him for themselves.