NOTHING TO DECLARE

The poems in Henri Cole's ninth book, Nothing to Declare, explore life and need and delight. Each poem starts up from its own unique occasion and is then conducted through surprising (sometimes unnerving) and self-steadying domains. The result is a daring, delicat e, unguarded, and tender collection. After his last three books-Touch, Blackbird and Wolf, and Middle Earth-in which the sonnet was a thrown shape and not merely a template, Cole's buoyant new poems seem trim and terse, with a first-place, last-ditch resonance. In their so...[Read more]