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

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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.

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.