Henri Cole’s most recent book, Nothing to Declare, appeared earlier this year. Each subsequent book has offered what the New York Times Book Review called his ‘rigorous, sensual testimony.’ His fifth book, Middle Earth won the 2004 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2012 Cole received the Jackson Poetry Prize, which honors ‘an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition.’ That day, Cole – who has taught at Harvard, Yale, and Ohio State University, among other schools – was preparing to move to California, where he was recently appointed Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College.Ĭole is one of the United States’ most lauded poets, whom Harold Bloom has called ‘a master poet, with few peers.’ Born in Fukuoka, Japan, Cole was raised in Virginia and published his first book, The Marble Queen, in 1986. The artworks of his friends and collaborators Kiki Smith and Jenny Holzer adorn the walls curiosities and objet d’art line the shelves and books are everywhere. After the hot, busy street, his rooms at the top of several flights of stairs were airy, cool, and elegant. I met Henri Cole at his apartment in Boston’s South End on a sweaty July day.

Middle Earth by Henri Cole