{"id":463,"date":"2012-04-23T20:48:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T20:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.basaltmagazine.com\/?p=463"},"modified":"2012-09-07T16:47:45","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T16:47:45","slug":"review-of-touch-by-henri-cole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/2012\/04\/23\/review-of-touch-by-henri-cole\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Touch by Henri Cole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Farrar, Straus, Giroux 2011
\nHardcover, $23<\/p>\n

by James Crews<\/p>\n

Henri Cole\u2019s Touch<\/em> is a dark but redemptive book. These poems\u2014many of them sonnets\u2014strike an elegiac, confessional tone as Cole reconstructs his personal history through memory, dreams and observations of the ordinary in the natural world. Touch<\/em> builds upon the mastery already in full display in earlier collections that include the excellent Blackbird and Wolf<\/em> (FSG, 2007) and Middle Earth<\/em> (FSG, 2003) which received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Cole has always turned toward nature for clues to our sometimes inexplicable emotions and instincts, but one admires the straightforwardness and simplicity employed often with heartbreaking accuracy in this new book, much of which chronicles his mother\u2019s death. The following passage from \u201cSunflower\u201d gives us an intact moment of communion between son and mother:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

. . . \u201cNature<\/em>
\nis always expressing something human,\u201d<\/em>
\nmother commented, her mouth twisting,<\/em>
\nas I plucked whiskers from around it.<\/em>
\n\u201cYes. No. Please.\u201d Tenderness was not yet dust.<\/em>
\nMother sat up, rubbed her eyes drowsily, her breaths<\/em>
\nlike breakers, the living man the beach.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cole seems most at ease when speaking of the body and does not shy away from depicting its luridness, or the violence visited upon it as in \u201cMosquito Mother\u201d:<\/p>\n

. . . Then I felt your subtle knife touching me,<\/em>
\nas if I were just some part of the scenery, and we sat<\/em>
\nlike that a long time, your moist red crown all shiny,<\/em>
\nas if from effusions: milk, blood, tears, urine, semen.<\/em><\/p>\n

In this poet\u2019s hands, even a mosquito bite can become almost romantic\u2014and unquestionably sexual\u2014because he knows, as insignificant as we humans are to nature and time itself, our bodies still follow the laws of nature. In Touch<\/em>, Cole employs his characteristically concise line to get at the brokenness and silences that fill our lives. Here, just after his mother\u2019s passing, he describes a fresh snowfall:<\/p>\n

like linen unfolded<\/em>
\nconjuring the domestic\u2014<\/em>
\nforces us inward<\/em>
\ninto fraught territories<\/em>
\nof self and family,<\/em><\/p>\n

instead of out into waves<\/em>
\nat the beach or furrows<\/em>
\nin the bronzing garden.<\/em>
\nFold one thousand<\/em>
\npaper cranes at the kitchen table,<\/em><\/p>\n

and the spirits will cure you,<\/em>
\na friend once advised . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

These \u201cfraught territories\u201d\u2014the zones between moments of beauty and moments of loss, perhaps\u2014are the borderlands these poems map out for us. And when the collection moves into recounting the loss of a lover to addiction, we sense Cole\u2019s powerlessness even as he gives in to the passion few among us can control. In \u201cOne Animal,\u201d we hear the speaker uselessly cautioning himself:<\/p>\n

And do not think\u2014touching his hair,<\/em>
\nlicking, sucking, and being sucked in the same<\/em>
\ninstant, no longer lonely\u2014that you<\/em>
\nare two animals perfect as one.<\/em><\/p>\n

The temptation, of course, is to justify all of our wildest desires and claim that we are simply following instinct. But humans, Cole suggests, with our flawed and distractible minds and self-inflicted addictions, fail as true animals again and again. We think too much; we cause ourselves too much needless suffering. As he says in \u201cSelf-Portrait with Addict\u201d:<\/p>\n

You won\u2019t come to bed because you\u2019re<\/em>
\ndoing amphetamines again. There\u2019s no animal<\/em>
\nthat sleep-deprives itself like the human.<\/em>
\nPlease, I say, repeating the monosyllable.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some readers might wonder how a speaker so seemingly self-aware could surrender to such a clearly destructive love, but Cole\u2019s defense rests with each poem (\u201ca little mirror to mull over\/the question \u2018Who am I and why?\u2019\u201d) in which he is (as we all are) \u201chunting the elusive laughing monster of contentment.\u201d Though his work must necessitate an intense solitude and ascetic nature, Cole nevertheless confesses: \u201cI want to be real, to think, to live.\u201d Indeed, his poems reflect a tightly controlled extravagance that does not seek to offer us solace or comfort; we sense instead that he hopes to unsettle readers\u2014and himself most of all\u2014in order to better understand his place in a confusing world. And he knows that \u201cto be real\u201d is to live a life of regret and error just like everybody else, so that \u201cthe art of life\/becomes, mostly,\/the art of avoiding pain.\u201d His work thus attests to what our self-inflicted suffering can teach us.<\/p>\n

The sheer pleasure Henri Cole seems to take in the act of writing\u2014that is, giving voice and form to the forces of human emotion\u2014mitigates much of the sadness that colors Touch<\/em>. His honesty and awareness allow him to speak as if from a still point the truth we all seek:<\/p>\n

. . . But writing this now, my hand is warm.<\/em>
\nThe character I call Myself isn\u2019t lustful, heavy,<\/em>
\nmelancholic. It\u2019s as if emotions are no longer bodied.<\/em>
\nEros isn\u2019t ripping through darkness. It\u2019s as if I\u2019m<\/em>
\na boy again, observing the births of two baby lambs.<\/em>
\nThe world has just come into existence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cole is always reaching for a deeper understanding of the world through poems that begin with his immediate surroundings but soon enough move into one of those \u201cfraught territories.\u201d Many of these pieces have little to do with the autobiographical, yet they resonate all the more. Take, for instance, the closing lines of \u201cHens\u201d:<\/p>\n

. . . There\u2019s a way the wounded<\/em>
\nlight up a dark rectangular space. Suffering becomes<\/em>
\nthe universal theme. Too soft, and you\u2019ll be squeezed;<\/em>
\ntoo hard, and you\u2019ll be broken. Even a hen knows this,<\/em>
\nposing on a manure pile, her body a stab of gold.<\/em><\/p>\n

As with much of Cole\u2019s past work, these poems too shine with a welcome humility, which is that of the poet bowing down to the portion of the mystery he\u2019s doing his best to bring to light. \u201cHairy Spider\u201d reminds us of the insignificance of our daily joys and pains as the speaker muses:<\/p>\n

. . . Can she see if I am climbing,<\/em>
\nI wonder, or kneeling down here on the dock, day after day,<\/em>
\nwhen it\u2019s time for reading and writing again, and a hairy spider\u2014<\/em>
\ningenious, bashful, insolent, laborious, patient\u2014observes<\/em>
\na man no different than a lily, a worm, a clod of clay?<\/em><\/p>\n

Touch<\/em> brims with more than just observations, however; this collection fashions a language, much-needed in our tight-lipped culture, to speak of the useless divisions between love and grief, body and mind, animal and human. Yet again, Cole has unearthed the many fears and failings we all share, and as a result, this book is as intimate as \u201cthe sound of someone else breathing\u201d just next to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Farrar, Straus, Giroux 2011 Hardcover, $23 by James Crews Henri Cole\u2019s Touch is a dark but redemptive book. These poems\u2014many of them sonnets\u2014strike an elegiac, confessional tone as Cole reconstructs his personal history through memory, dreams and observations of the ordinary in the natural world. Touch builds upon the mastery already in full display in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[13,26,33,36,52],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-blackbird-and-wolf","tag-henri-cole","tag-kingsley-tufts-poetry-award","tag-middle-earth","tag-touch"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}