Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 (City Lights Spotlight) [Paperback]

Norma Cole (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2009 | Series: City Lights Spotlight (Book 1)

The inaugural volume in the new Spotlight poetry series, Where Shadows Will selects from twenty years of innovative poetry by writer, painter, and translator Norma Cole. Cole has been a fixture of the Bay Area scene since 1977, writing melodic and experimental poetry whose shadow-haunted landscapes embody an exploration of the relationship between language, self, and world. Cole was a member of the circle of poets around Robert Duncan and a fellow traveler of the language poets. Drawing on long out-of-print volumes and recent books—such as her acclaimed Spinoza in Her Youth (2002)—Where Shadows Will confirms Cole’s place as a major avant-garde poet and a leading voice among contemporary women writers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. For the inaugural volume in its new Spotlight series, a sequel to City Lights' famous Pocket Poets line (in which Ginsberg's Howl first appeared), the publisher has chosen this retrospective collection by San Francisco poet Cole. A disciple of Robert Duncan, Cole casts her short poems in jagged verse and prose blocks, by turns abstract (Imaginations law hits frames), surreal (Bark grew up over their faces) and painterly in a manner that will be familiar to fans of Barbara Guest: This is the image of effort. Other pieces work more like disjunctive fables: one such prose poem describes how A little of life simply escapes from a shallow dish. Cole is far better known on the West Coast and in experimental poetry circles than anywhere else; in fact, her work is surprisingly accessible given its avant garde origins and ambitions—beautiful phrases and lines leap off the page (Then his/ signature will have taken place, reads one poem)—and this concise gathering of poems from her 15 small press books should bring Cole much deserved attention. (June)
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Review

"For the inaugural volume in its new Spotlight series, a sequel to City Lights' famous Pocket Poets line (in which Ginsberg's Howl first appeared), the publisher has chosen this retrospective collection by San Francisco poet Cole. A disciple of Robert Duncan, Cole casts her short poems in jagged verse and prose blocks, by turns abstract ("Imaginations law hits frames"), surreal ("Bark grew up over their faces") and painterly in a manner that will be familiar to fans of Barbara Guest: "This is the image of effort." Other pieces work more like disjunctive fables: one such prose poem describes how "A little of life simply escapes from a shallow dish." Cole is far better known on the West Coast and in experimental poetry circles than anywhere else; in fact, her work is surprisingly accessible given its avant garde origins and ambitions--beautiful phrases and lines leap off the page ("Then his/ signature will have taken place," reads one poem)--and this concise gathering of poems from her 15 small press books should bring Cole much deserved attention." --Publishers Weekly

"For me, a fluid lyricism is the glue in these ever-morphing, syntactically scintillating fountains: 'all clipped together the fog cool dogeared it spotted with sparkles of light its heels.'

The 'international memory' of Where Shadows Will, becomes 'Collective Memory' in Natural Light. Here the fragments are fixed in their dispersed brokenness: 'The nothing spread out all around.'

In 'No Time at All' each isolated phrase reads like a separate performance in a matinee program. We are freed from narrative and delivered to the telling where 'something blinked back.' The work is heroic an 'epic without story.'

Above all, 'the poem is a toy' and Cole, an ideal playmate. Abandon despair all ye who enter here. 'Verily, kiddo.'" - Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, The Brooklyn Rail --Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, The Brooklyn Rail

"Some poets have a wide library of works, and you'll miss the brightest gems unless you look really closely. Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 takes the best of Norma Cole's work from over twenty years, and places it all in one collection as part of City Lights' Spotlight series. An excellent collection to start the series with, Where Shadows Will is a poetry reader's delight." --James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review

"Cole's verse ranges vastly in form and subject, with a large selection of prose poems. Her dialogue with contemporary French poetry is especially evident . . . Even with a half-hearted listen, it's easy to tell that Cole's poetry is different. Where Shadows Will offers only the beginning of an introduction, a whetting of the palate." --Molossus

"Compatriot of a whole generation of French poets whose names are legion--Roubard, Hocquard, Claude-Royet, Collobert--Norma Cole is one of contemporary poetry's quintessential radicals; such a thing is thought beyond these shores. That her new book, Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 (City Lights books, 2009), confirms this beyond doubt. It seems a document of the intense skirmishes at the beginning of time, when tone was utterly impersonal, maximally capacious....Always political (seldom yet knowingly politicized, as in "'I Saw Shells...'") in its refusal to yield to the demands of a more strident poetics, her work is of a paradoxically pleasant and thoroughgoing antinomian difficulty. It hasn't given up on any ground gained." --David Lau --Lana Turner

"Shadows demonstrates the continuity of [Cole's] efforts from poem to poem, book to book, year to year. . . [The collection] crystallizes questions from throughout Cole's career: to what extent is personal experience shared or universal, and what, exactly, is our 'backyard,' anyway? Ancient Egypt? The modern-day Congo? The entire solar system?" --Chris McCreary, Poetry Project Newsletter

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Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (May 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087286474X
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864740
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,821,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Takes the best of Norma Cole's work from over twenty years, August 15, 2009

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 (City Lights Spotlight) (Paperback)

Some poets have a wide library of works, and you'll miss the brightest gems unless you look really closely. "Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008" takes the best of Norma Cole's work from over twenty years, and places it all in one collection as part of City Lights' Spotlight series. An excellent collection to start the series with, "Where Shadows Will" is a poetry reader's delight. "Her and There": "Consciousness", explained More Pataphysics, rigid with emotion./The weather turned. We had not heard you come in. "Have you ever/forced a lover out of your own dream? Why can't I write a book/called Fraud? They talked about music as it forms, far away in/time, in a state of place, in all its versions. She shook until she split/the mirrored room. She shook the map-case open, terribly and ruth-/lessly. An ocean or continent of blood poured out in sheets on the/body.

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad, January 15, 2012

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Johnny Milkshake (West Virginia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 (City Lights Spotlight) (Paperback)

Incoherent garble masquerading as poesy. Horse-turdesque syntax mashing. Pointless as coitus in hazmat suits. Excerpt: "Fells the higher things international memory of probability"? Really? The only redeemable thing about Cole's verse is that it isn't Billy Collins. Avoid this at all costs.