Nothing to Declare: Poems

The highly acclaimed Cole (Touch) begins his ninth collection with the perilous honesty that audiences have come to expect%E2%80%94and value%E2%80%94in his work: "I like invisibleness/ except in the moon%E2%80%99s strong,/ broad rays. Some nights/ I ask her paleness, %E2%80%98Will I be okay?%E2%80%99%E2%80%8A" As the title suggests, the speaker navigates a subtle struggle to find purpose among the concrete details of life. "It%E2%80%99s as if my whole body/ ceased to exist," he writes, "and I experience/ the end of Henri/ in an infinitude of words." Readers bear witness to an elegant loneliness%E2%80%94"It%E2%80%99s nice to have a lake to love me"%E2%80%94and feel the heaviness of life%E2%80%99s burdens through the delicacy of Cole%E2%80%99s language: "everyday thoughts that are my world/ returned to me, sunlight was white/ with misty distances,/ and I lived." With precise sophistication, Cole perfects a crucial technique of poetry%E2%80%94the art of close speculation%E2%80%94and does so with intrepid grace. When Cole spends a little too much time navel-gazing, the poems are rescued by bracing, heartrending reminders of mortality: "Probably only/ an examiner/ could distinguish/ a raccoon%E2%80%99s bones/ from my own." (Apr.)