What I'm Reading #6 (Summer Reading #1)

blackbirdandwolf
Originally uploaded by Randuwa

For some reason I read a lot more than I share with you on this blog. Recently, I've been reading a lot of poetry collections.

"Blackbird And Wolf" is by Henri Cole. His poetry is very intimate and insightful. In this collection he writes often of loss and offers his attempts to make sense of this.

In the poem (My favorite in the collection) "Gravity And Center" he states: "I don't want words to sever me from reality./I don't want to need them. I want nothing/to reveal feeling but feeling--as in freedom,/or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond,/or the sound of water poured in a bowl." and that visceral aural image stops one dead and becomes the fulcrum from which the rest of the poem is balanced.

That's how he gets me: with images that captivate and encapsulate ideas. This also occurs in the poem "Homosexuality" which is about his being awakened in the middle of the night to discover a duck trapped in the flew of his wood stove. After rescuing the sooty survivor the poem ends with: "climbing back naked into bed with you." Thus his sexuality is far more common, far less remarkable an event than a duck caught in his chimney; and still it is important and intimate in a way that heterosexuality ought to be.

I love Henri Cole’s poems. I worry about him...too many of these poems are about loss and loneliness. Perhaps he congers up in me an openness to a place where we are birds of a feather.....