( 6 reviews )
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( 2 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: Sep 1 2004
I thought the poetry in Middle Earth was very fine, the work was direct and straightforward without being plain which I loved. It was not pretentious. It was not redundant. It was often surprisingly humorous (to me at least) and always both insightful and honest.
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( 2 of 7 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jun 25 2004
I disagree with the last two reviewers. I think that Henri Cole is at the height of his maturity as a poet. He navigates through the variations of the sonnet with ease; and there are surprises and compressed intricacies in every poem. MIDDLE EARTH is a fine book.
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( 10 of 13 found this review helpful ) Posted: Apr 16 2004
I enjoyed Cole's last book but dislike this one. Though Cole aims for a certain kind of truth, the self-hating in this book becomes a mere self-indulgence in poem after poem. Cole tries to elicit the reader's sympathy under the pretense of writing nakedly; instead, Cole simply has settled into a repetitive style. Cole tries to walk "on an edge," to fuse his metaphors into "one crystalline rock," but his self-indulgent, myopic posturing leaves one cold, "like ice in a champagne bucket."
