Thomas Cole's Poetry: The Collected Poems of America's Foremost Painter of the Hudson River School [Hardcover]

Thomas Cole (Author), Marshall B. Tymn (Editor)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: George Shumway Pub (June 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873870573
• ISBN-13: 978-0873870573
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,704,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Pen as Complement to the Brush, May 4, 2005

By 

S. A. Cartwright "Stu Cartwright" (Wayland, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thomas Cole's Poetry: The Collected Poems of America's Foremost Painter of the Hudson River School (Hardcover)

"Ye mountains, woods, rocks, and impetuous streams

Ye mantling heav'ns -- Speak -- speak for me!"

Arguably, one of America's most important artists, and the founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painting, Thomas Cole also had a literary side. Largely unknown, his compositions with the pen encompass more than 100 poems and a healthy smattering of prose. A few were published, but most were left behind in a rough assemblage of his journals and notebooks. In 1972, as part of a doctoral dissertation, Marshall Tymn compiled and edited these to produce this tidy volume of 105 poems.

As with his prolific paintings, Cole's poems reflect an awe of nature. A romantic through and through, Cole waxes lyrically about the rugged beauty of mountains, lakes and valleys of a newly found rural America. Tymn points out Thomas Cole's love for mountains; they fill his large ornate canvases dwarfing any small human figures that may appear. A devotee of the Catskill and Adirondack regions of upstate New York, Cole embraced the outdoors with religious ferver -- he praises it unabashedly:

"The Hudson lies below, a mirror'd Heaven" and

"No! Tis Niagara shouts from the abyss" and

"Before thee lies the Holy Lake outspread" [Lake George] and

"Hail Monarch of a thousand giant hills!" [Mt. Washington]

Tymn, in his introduction, points out that Cole's poetry is not the burnished work of Wordsworth or other romantic poets. Cole never intended as much, and many of the pieces do read more like inspired entries in a diary than "higher style" verse. And where Cole left his works unpolished in journal form, Tymn has resurrected the rough stuff, footnoted with explanatory notes, and excellent documentation. The poems are presented in chronological order: towards the end more verses are penned as letters to friends or to mark the occasion of a death. The collection also includes four black and white photographs of Cole's work, among them "Landscape Scene for the The Last of the Mohicans" and "The Clove, Catskills" both painted in 1827 at the height of Cole's fascination with the romantic landscape.

Cole's allegorical lines about the bold American landscape are an interesting complement to his paintings. Anyone with an interest in the Hudson River School will appreciate this volume.