Middle Earth (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Henri Cole
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Time of Work: 1956-2003
- Setting: Japan, the United States, and Germany
- Principal Characters: The persona, The Father, The Mother, A male Lover
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Parents and children, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Sex or sexuality, Twentieth century, Fathers, Death or dying, Japan or Japanese people, Animals, Apes, Primates
- Locales: United States, Germany, Japan
With Middle Earth, Henri Cole offers a collection of highly personal and introspective poems. They are all written from the perspective of a first-person narrator, who is called a persona in literary criticism of poetry, as he is not named and not necessarily the same as the live author. Thematically, Cole’s poems circle around this persona and the questions he faces regarding his relationships with his parents, a male lover, his self-identity, and the world around him.
In terms of style, Cole likes to begin a poem by having his persona observing a concrete object, such...
[The entire page is 1867 words long]
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