{"id":158712,"date":"2022-04-24T08:45:30","date_gmt":"2022-04-24T12:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=158712"},"modified":"2022-04-21T15:38:40","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T19:38:40","slug":"listen-henri-cole-read-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/04\/24\/listen-henri-cole-read-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen to Henri Cole Read Poems from the Paris Review<\/em> Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Henri Cole IN NAGS HEAD, NORTH CAROLINA, 1978.<\/p><\/div>\n

What a pleasure to read around in the\u00a0Paris Review<\/i> archive of poems from its pages. I experienced anew the capriciousness of taste and the ardor of individual decades. As the guest editor of the Review<\/em>\u2019<\/span>s daily poetry newsletter this\u00a0week, I chose poems that I consider keepers for my lifetime. All are by poets I read avidly in my twenties and thirties, when I was still unformed and seeking liberators. For me, Baudelaire, Mi\u0142osz<\/span>, Walcott, Gregg, Gl\u00fcck, Wright, and Schuyler are masters in the craft of language. Their words (assembled into art) transport me.\u00a0Even now, at sixty-five, I am always looking for new liberators. Thank goodness poetry is unkillable. Thank goodness poetry is continually renewed by a rediscovery of the past, by new translations, and by the ache of the young.<\/p>\n

Listen<\/i> to Henri Cole read his selections here<\/strong><\/a>, and read his commentary below.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt Is the Rising I Love<\/a>\u201d<\/strong> by Linda Gregg\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

This poem is a glorious representation of the mind and soul of Linda Gregg, who died in 2019. When her first book,<\/span> Too Bright to See<\/span><\/em>, was published, I was in my twenties. With its strange innocence that seemed to have symbolic meanings, it captivated me. I value the neat way her poems communicate the darkness that surrounds mankind. As Joseph Brodsky said, her poems have a \u201cblinding intensity,\u201d like \u201clightning\u201d or \u201cheartbreak.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201c<\/strong>The Crystal Lithium<\/a><\/b>\u201d <\/strong>by\u00a0James Schuyler<\/b><\/p>\n

James Schuyler is my favorite New York School poet. \u201cThe Crystal Lithium\u201d is the first of his great, long-lined, long poems. \u201cAll six senses are at play, plus those of tone and form,\u201d as James Merrill observed of this shy poet\u2019s wonderful poems, which prove that a \u201c\u00a0\u2018reverence for life\u2019 doesn\u2019t have to be boring.\u201d Readers of this poem should remember that lithium compounds, known as lithium salts, are used as a psychiatric medication, primarily for bipolar disorder.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201c<\/strong>Figs<\/a>\u201d <\/strong> by\u00a0Louise Gl\u00fcck\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Louise Gl\u00fcck is a marvelous poet. There is so much effortless intelligence in her poems. In just a few lines, she creates a tone with the peculiar power to draw us deeply in. \u201cFigs\u201d is so sharp and clear a narration, so ravishing it seems to declare simultaneously something familiar yet new about the journey of one soul, about the pulse of the earth, and about the ebb and flow of marital love.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201c<\/strong>The Sea Is History<\/a>\u201d by Derek Walcott<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n

Derek Walcott was my teacher. It\u2019s difficult for me to be objective about this magisterial poet. I first read \u2018The Sea Is History\u2019 as a young man, in Walcott\u2019s beautiful book <\/span>The Star-Apple Kingdom<\/span><\/em>, a book with a public dimension that traces Antillean history. Among other things, Walcott is a master of simile, and I love his lamenting seafarer\u2019s tone. For me, his poems reestablish poetry\u2019s responsibility to our common, troubled, historical past.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201c<\/span>Lying in a Hammock at a Friend\u2019s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota<\/a><\/b>\u201d<\/span> by James Wright\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

This free-verse sonnet is, of course, inflected by Rilke\u2019s \u201cArchaic Torso of Apollo.\u201d The explosion of Rilke\u2019s concluding line<\/span>\u2014\u201c<\/span>You must change your life\u201d<\/span>\u2014<\/span>becomes, in James Wright\u2019s poem, \u201cI have wasted my life.\u201d The simplified beauty of his language and its truth-telling seem to me as enduring as classical Chinese poetry. I\u2019m so grateful for the dark turn this poem makes at its finish. A man\u2019s life is not a thing to sentimentalize.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cMy Faithful Mother Tongue<\/a>\u201d\u00a0by Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Years ago, when I lived in Japan, the country of my birth, I felt most at home in the bookstore aisle of publications in English.<\/span>\u00a0For Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz, a great servant of the Muses, the Polish language was his home, but he recognized that it was home, too, to \u201cinformers,\u201d to the \u201cdebased,\u201d and to the \u201cunreasonable.\u201d Still, Mi\u0142osz remained faithful to his mother tongue, for it was also for him a place of incarnation and renewal.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201c<\/strong>Epigraph for a Banned Book<\/a><\/b>\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>by Charles Baudelaire\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I grew up reading Richard Howard\u2019s translation of Baudelaire\u2019s <\/span>Les fleurs du mal<\/span><\/em>, and it remains for me the standard version, even at its campiest, fiercest, and most theatrical. I adore Baudelaire\u2019s breach of decorum, his openness to sorrow and tenderness, and his spleen. A hundred and fifty years later, his poems sound to me so original and contemporary.<\/span><\/p>\n

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