The Other Love

The Other Love is frank, funny, unsettling, and tonally virtuosic in its artful critique of the present moment, offering the imperfect individuality of the poet as a moral counterweight to the violence that the powers that be are inflicting upon the world

David Woo, Poetry Magazine

I receive each new book by Henri Cole as a bright gift, dark though it may be. Cole intimately observes the everyday, drilling gently into the underbelly of whatever is before him – "armored vehicles" that "confront young people," the indignities of app-based dating, the young T.S. Eliot in the extraordinary closing poem – softly drawing blood, if such a thing is possible, seeking the moments when "Darkness will no longer exceed light"

Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR

These are hopeful and gilded poems, managing to suggest the rich life of the mind but never abandoning the body. . . . [The Other Love] reveals a new edge to Cole’s voice—composed, taut with nerves, but tempered with wisdom . . . These are exemplary lyrics of witness

Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

Cole has not compromised any of the principles established in his work from early on. Continuing to write with brio… [these] reassuring lyrics suggest that no matter what terror comes along, our noble charge is to fight to the end, joyously

Michael Londra, Arts Fuse

Cole's latest collection meditates on aging and the passage of time through explorations of portraiture, everyday domesticity, and interestingly, plant and animal life… The poems are also political—snapshots of the current era in the U.S.—whether captured at a cautious distance… or loaded with more sinister implications

Diego Báez, Booklist