by Henri Cole
First published 2025
Henri Cole captures time's relentless march in poems that wrestle with growing older. These verses examine how bodies change and memories accumulate while the world continues its violent turns. Cole observes American brutality alongside everyday beauty, finding ways to love people and objects as they exist rather than as ideals. The poems balance structured verse against life's disorder. They reveal a perspective that stays open to wonder even while acknowledging cruelty. Cole writes about acceptance without surrender, about seeing clearly without losing hope. The collection presents love not as romance but as a way of engaging with reality. These poems offer readers a method for living with time's passage and the world's contradictions. Louise Glück praised the work as a triumph from a skilled artist.
Genres: essays, literary-fiction, contemporary, poetry
Vibes: bittersweet, contemplative, introspective, lyrical, meditative, thought-provoking
Tropes: philosophical-inquiry, unreliable-perception
Setting: America
Period: 21st-century
80 pages · Paperback · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: death