29. Henri Cole — “Haiku”
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Henri Cole wrote his poem, "Haiku," after visiting a jellyfish exhibit at an aquarium. In the poem, he places himself on the beach, in red pajamas, observing and contemplating what he calls the “unnatural cycles” that have emerged in our world.
He jumps between the global and the self, switching between third person and first person, connecting our individual lives to the uncanny and unsettling natural world that we find ourselves in, in a way that poetry seems best positioned to explore.
I’m John Fiege, and this episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series.
Henri was born in Japan to a French mother and an American father. He is the author of a memoir and twelve books of poetry. His awards are numerous and include the Jackson Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lenore Marshall Award, a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the Award of Merit Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught at many colleges and universities, including Smith, Reed, Brandeis, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale. He currently teaches at Claremont McKenna College.
I spoke to Henri on June 29, 2022, and we had a horrible international internet connection with a delay. We’ve edited the conversation so it sounds more natural, but please forgive any remaining moments of awkward pauses and jumps.
Here is Henri Cole reading his poem, “Haiku.”
Haiku
by Henri Cole
After the sewage flowed into the sea
and took the oxygen away, the fishes fled,
but the jellies didn’t mind. They stayed
and ate up the food the fishes left behind.
I sat on the beach in my red pajamas
and listened to the sparkling foam,
like feelings being fustigated. Nearby,
a crayfish tugged on a string. In the distance,
a man waved. Unnatural cycles seemed to be
establishing themselves, without regard to our lives.
Deep inside, I could feel a needle skip:
Autumn dark.
Murmur of the saw.
Poor humans.
Henri Cole
Henri Cole is an American poet who has authored numerous collections and garnered a plethora of vestiges of acclaim for his far-reaching and deeply moving works. Such recognition includes the American Academy of Arts and Letter’s Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, and, most recently, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Born in Fukuoka, Japan, Cole grew up in Virginia, eventually pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree at the College of William and Mary. Through further educational pursuits, Cole also achieved a Master of Arts at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, as well as a Master of Fine Arts at Columbia University.
Cole is the author of numerous collections of poetry spanning five decades, including 2003’s Middle Earth, which won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He released Gravity and Center, a collection of sonnets across 29 years, this past May. In addition to these collections, he wrote a memoir in 2018 called Orphic Paris. Cole has also collaborated with visual artists Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith, with an example of such work being the 2004 installation Purple Cross, which presents lines pulled from “Blur” (a poem from Middle Earth) using LEDs.
In addition to his aforementioned awards, Cole has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Ingram Merrill Foundation, and Carmargo Foundation. He has previously served as executive director of the Academy of American Poets for six years and editor for poetry of the New Republic for four years. Having taught at Ohio State, Harvard, and Yale, he now works at Claremont McKenna College as a Professor of Literature.
Notes and Media Recommendations
- Henri Cole's Website:
- Poet Henri Cole reads, March 2022
- The Other Love: Poems by Henri Cole
- Blizzard: Poems by Henri Cole
- Middle Earth: Poems by Henri Cole
- Gravity and Center: Selected Sonnets, 1994-2002 by Henri Cole
Credits
This episode was researched by Brodie Mutschler and edited by Sarah Westrich, with additional editing by Morgan Honaker. Music is by Daniel Rodríguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.