Soft Power

Watch out for those who have, seek, and hold onto power. So drink As the fanged stoat from the rabbit's nape As though from a flagon of river water Shaken with ancestral ash As if it isn't knowledge you seek But some osmotic soul-food To be filled up with blurs That might later resolve themselves Into memories To return to where you really live With changes in your blood Lyrical yet shot through with experimental and political veins, the poems in Soft Power are engaged with both the here-and-now of a world on the brink and the hope of something better, a planet where "generations hence / Inactivists will bathe under a sun made safe / By the collapse of oil-can economics." Traversing badlands, sandhills, prairies, suburbia, Miami, London, Dublin, Paris, and beyond, Cole's voice revels in questions of travel while resonating with the unheimlich "Canadalienation" of his expatriate existence. Whether bog surfing, gallery hopping, bug hunting, or meditating on the "strange genre" of national anthems, the poems in Cole's long-awaited follow-up collection to his critically acclaimed Questions in Bed exist in a searching exchange with the world, both entering and being entered by it.