The Visible Man: Poems 1st Edition

by Henri Cole (Author)

3 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0374284480

ISBN-10: 9780374284480

Why is ISBN important?

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Share <Embed>

Buy new

$6.44

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Ships from and sold by jf overstock books.

This item does not ship to France. Please check other sellers who may ship internationally.

List Price: $12.00
Save: $5.56 (46%)

17 New from $12.00

Deliver to France

$6.44

Turn on 1-Click ordering

More Buying Choices

17 New from $12.00 22 Used from $8.91

39 used & new from $12.00

See All Buying Options

Free Two-Day Shipping for College Students with Amazon Student

"To write what is human, not escapist," is Henri Cole's endeavor. In The Visible Man he pursues his aim by folding autobiography and memory into the thirty severe and fiercely truthful lyrics--poems presenting a constant tension between classical repose and the friction of life--that make up this exuberant book. This work, wrote Harold Bloom, "persuades me that Cole will be a central poet of his generation. The tradition of Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane is beautifully extended in The Visible Man, particularly in the magnificent sequence 'Apollo.' Keats and Hart Crane are presences here, and Henri Cole invokes them with true aesthetic dignity, which is the mark of nearly every poem in The Visible Man."

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The invention of a self so harrowing in character will remind readers of the confessions in Robert Lowell's Life Studies . . . Most other books would be reduced to ashes by the comparison.” ―William Logan, The Washington Post Book World

“* In his fourth collection, Henri Cole has submitted to the unsparing self-examination and self-generated demand for change that mark the true artist . . . The voice that breaks the poems open frees itself in a crucible of confession and absolution, through poems that incorporate history, art, religion, family, and sexuality.” ―Tina Barr, The Boston Review

From the Inside Flap

Praised by Harold Bloom and many other critics and poets for his earlier collections, Henri Cole has grown steadily in poetic stature and importance. "To write what is human, not escapist," is his endeavor. Now he pursues his aim by folding autobiography and memory into the thirty severe and fiercely truthful lyrics--poems presenting a constant tension between classical repose and the friction of life--that make up this exuberant book.
On being awarded the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Henri Cole received the following citation:
"In a poetry nervously alive to the maladies of the contemporary, yet suffused by a rare apprehension of the delights of the senses, Henri Cole has relished the world while being unafraid to satirize it. In poems that are both decorative and plain-spoken he permits his readers to share a keen and unsentimental view of the oddities, horrors, and solaces surrounding them at the end of the twentieth century."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (October 5, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780374284480
ISBN-13: 978-0374284480
ASIN: 0374284482
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,812,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3407 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Literature > American Literature
- #9612 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > United States
- #160787 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

See Kindle Edition

3 customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars

5 star

4 star

3 star (0%)

2 star (0%)

1 star (0%)

Review this product

Write a customer review

Showing 1-3 of 3 reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Judy Lightfoot

"Writing What Is Human"

July 27, 2001

Format: Paperback

[This book brief appeared March 11, 1999, in Seattle's "The Stranger" and can be found online at [...]
Cole does to the sonnet what postmodern consciousness does to the self--he wrenches it, shatters it, sucks it dry, turns it inside out, and sometimes, for a moment, holds it in a quiet embrace. The central problem of his book is knowledge, which made Apollo a god but divides us from ourselves. Cole seeks to unite body and mind in a self through Arte Povera poems - rough, impromptu works "in motion, / stroking toward what [he] cannot see" ('Apollo'). But the self proves to be neither a temple for the spirit nor a sturdy Greek column, and Cole becomes a tourist and connoisseur of his own disintegration -- he is marble rubble, broken stanzas, stray glimpses of porn flicks, bouts of loveless fellatio under the pier. The poet is a Visible Man in what he calls an "erotic x-ray of my soul" ('Self-Portrait as Four Styles of Pompeian Wall Painting').
Though Cole refuses to flatter us with sweetness, he can be very funny, mingling exquisitely precise imagery with comic observation. Ancient crumbling statues resemble "bodies sinking in quicksand," but "a luckless prick / is frozen in the stucco." Scholars "eat big bowls of pasta / and drain their preposterous bowels" ('The Scholars'). Many passages are marvelous - history has "white teeth / jammed with gristle" ('The Black Jacket'); forgiveness is "so hard to swallow it unshackles us" ('26 Hands'); a house is "illuminated all night, / like the unconscious, though no one enters" ('The Coastguard Station').
Cole is determined "To write what is human, not escapist." He makes himself "at home with evil, with unexamined feelings, / with just the facts" ('Apollo'), and welcomes the "Stranger, with genitalia greased," crooning, "Come, unlace my boots; I chose you" ('Etna'). Here the nervous system is, for better or worse, the organ of the mind.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

A customer

Best Book of Poetry published in 1998

January 11, 1999

Format: Hardcover

Henri Cole has long been seen as a fussy apprentice to James Merrill and Elizabeth Bishop, but this has always been an issue easily overlooked because of the vigor with which Cole has often written about his subjects. With this, his fourth book, Cole has not rejected the fastidiousness of Bishop or the sly elegance of Merrill, he has corrupted these things and, by so doing, created a harrowing, desperate, powerful poetry. In many of these poems, the complications may seem less than subtle until one realizes the focus of angst is only one of the many complications in each poem. Christianity, its pagan predecessors, modern Law, Homosexuality and its place in these constructs--all of these issues are present but secondary to the voice of speaker whose anguish to understand is the anguish of self-blame and self-deception. A brilliant and haunting book of poems.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Joe Salas

Pretty good book

December 28, 1999

Format: Hardcover

I ended up buying , reading, and actually liking this book, but not necessarily because of the poetry itself. Some of it's a bit bad, with clunky words and phrases that sometimes wander into seemingly unrelated vagueness, though some of the images and lines are really good. What I really like about this book is what Cole has to say: his feelings, struggles, and perspective on himself and the world around him. It's intense and powerful, just like some of the other reviews say.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: The Visible Man: Poems

Set up a giveaway

The Visible Man: Poems 1st Edition

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Turn on 1-Click ordering

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Inside Flap

Product details

Related Video Shorts (0)

Be the first video

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

3 customer reviews

Review this product

Showing 1-3 of 3 reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Set up an Amazon Giveaway