The hand is second only to language in defining the human being, and its constant presence makes it a ready reminder of our humanity, with all its privileges and obligations. In this dazzling collecti
Treating subjects from landscape to sculpture to a 19th century technical encyclopedia, the poet is fascinated with light, glass, mirrors, flame, ice, mercury—things transparent, evanescent, impossibl
Influenced by the history of landscape painting, Cole Swensen’s new book is an experiment in seriality, in the different approach and scope that language must take to record the way that fluctuations
"Ghosts appear in place of whatever a given people will not face" (p. 65)The poems in Gravesend explore ghosts as instances of collective grief and guilt, as cultural constructs evolved to elide or to
Praise for Cole Swensen: "One of the most assured voices in contemporary poetry."---Library Journal "Engaging and delightful."---Publishers Weekly A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which colle
On Walking On looks outward onto—or rather, walks through—the work of various writers for whom walking was or is an important element of daily life. The number of writers who were or are serious walke
These poems are about gardens, particularly the seventeenth-century French baroque gardens designed by the father of the form, Andre Le Notre. While the poems focus on such examples as Versailles, whi
The post-impressionist Pierre Bonnard painted, among other things, dozens of paintings of windows. Starting there, this extended poem?part art criticism, part history?considers the phenomenon of glass
First published in 1997 by Sun & Moon Press, Noon was chosen by Rae Armantrout as the 2000 winner of the Gertrude Stein Award (formerly known as the New American Poetry Series Awards), an annual c
Poetry. "Cole Swensen's STELE goes forth with an artful, graceful balancing as in a minuet, stopping, bowing and then moving towards new thought. This reading 'presumes a crossing' of empty space in e
