Tenderness as an Ordering Principal: The Poetry of Henri Cole

by Jeremy Voigt

Jane Hirsfield in her essay, “Writing and the Threshold Life” quotes Galway Kinnell, “the secret title of every good poem might be ‘Tenderness.’” This rings true when reading Henri Cole’s book Middle Earth. His sharp attention to detail, his ability to pin abstract language between concrete images; his humility towards himself, the world, and his art allow Cole to write moments of great tenderness without sentimentality. Gregory Orr discusses the tension of “order and disorder” in poets and poetry in his book Richer Entanglements: specifically the essay, Order and Disorder in Lyric Poetry. I would argue that in Cole’s work moments of tenderness work as an ordering principal for the poet. To illustrate this idea I will look closely at “Ape House, Berlin Zoo.”

Cole writes effectively about human need for meaningful companionship while looking face to face with an ape. Doesn’t tenderness manifest itself most readily in human relationships? The first line of this poem draws the reader in with the intimate questioning, “Are the lost like this,” not only does the sound of the long a, and o, and repeated l, and s, sounds create an inviting and intimate music the question itself juxtaposed with the concrete title snaps the reader into deeper thought. It is also language of compassion at once literal, as the animal is caged, and abstractly encompassing lost human beings or souls. The simple first line is followed by three lines that syntactally complicate opening question.

living not like a plant, an inch to drink each week,
but like the grass snake under it,
gorging itself before a famine? (lines 3-5)

At first I did not like these lines because I felt they took away from the strong opening line. But the complexity of these lines acknowledges that this is not a simple question. The first line is short and enjambed so the reader naturally pauses at the white space and has time to contemplate this seemingly simple opening before plunging into the complex following lines. Meditating on the condition of the lost, Cole moves to the minute and specific grass snake desperately eating because food may become scarce. This attention to the small in the outer world sets up the tender thoughts to come regarding the inner world of the individual.
Next Cole introduces us to the ape, “Gazing at me longer than any human has in a long time, / you are my closest living relative in thousands of miles.” This image parallels the look of two lovers, or perhaps a parent’s gaze at a child and sets up the theme of close relationships running through the poem. The root of the word tenderness is tender which the OED defines as “one who waits or serves.” By using images of relationships Cole can ruminate on how the individual interacts with the world, both animal and human.

Next, Cole projects human interior qualities on the ape, “When your soul looks out through your eyes, / looking at me looking at you, what does it see?” He is submitting himself to the intelligence of the animal. Asking a question of deeper perspective, Cole is using the animal to look deep into himself. He does not address the animal in the physical, but in the metaphysical allowing the beast a spiritual presence. In order to look deeply into the self and to allow another being into such conversation the individual must possess great compassion.

This questioning leads to a series of comparisons between the ape and himself, “Like you, I was born in the East; / my arms are too long and my spine bowed; / I eat leaves, fruits and roots; I curl up when I sleep; I live alone.” This litany rhythmically and factually moves the poem further into self-examination. We learn facts of simple description, which reveal a vulnerable and perhaps lonely person. The next two lines reveal more about the nature of the speaker. “As your mother once cradled you, mine cradled me, / pushing her nipple between my gums.” Here Cole uses the syntactic repetition he has used before (“looking at me looking at you” from line eight) to set up his comparisons, but also to create a meditative tone akin to deep interior contemplation. In these lines he conjures an image of birth and intimacy, nothing is more basic to life than an infant feeding. The speaker is stripping away the world and looking at the source of his life.
The next seven lines slow the poem down:

Here, where time crawls forward, too slow for human eyes,
neither of us rushes into the future,
since the future means living with a self
that has fed on the squalor that is here.
I cannot tell which of us absorbs the other more;
I am free but you are not,
if freedom means traveling long distances to avoid boredom. (lines 14-20)

The length of line 14 and the long sentences force the eye to slow down, as the speaker describes slowing down to avoid an unpleasant future. This is an example of what Gregory Orr describes as the tension of “order and disorder” in poetry (Richer Entanglements: Order and Disorder in Lyric Poetry). The author nods toward the disorder of an uncertain future based on the “squalor that is here.” The future self must be a product of the present situation. There is a sense of helplessness in this sentiment. The speaker uses tenderness as an ordering principal to the disorder he observes, he provides the order of intimate relationship, I cannot tell which of us absorbs the other more.

From here, Cole continues his tact of describing the ape in order to describe the speaker’s self. He says, “When a child shakes his dirty fist in your face…you are not impressed. Indolence has made you philosophical” (compression of lines 21-23). The oppressive (or disorderly) outside world has forced the self to the interior. This develops complex emotions, a combination of kindness and frustration: “From where I stand, you are beautiful and ugly at once, like a weed or a human” (line 24). Again, the speaker reacts with tenderness to create order:

We are children meeting for the first time,
each standing in the other’s light.
Instruments of darkness have not yet told us truths;
love has not yet made us jealous or cruel,
though it has made us look like one another. (lines 25-29)

Note that the speaker does not disregard the disorder of life while creating order, instruments of darkness still exist but they are not oppressive, yet. The speaker through an empathetic exchange with the ape balances this terror, hate, or pain.

Lines thirty through thirty-three pinpoint the source of the speaker’s pain, wandering, and indolence.
It is understood that part of me lives in you,
or is it the reverse, as it was with my father,
before all of him went into a pint of ash? (lines 30-33)

The speaker is dealing with the weight of the complex relationship with the living father, and the inability to resolve that relationship after the father’s death. This sends the speaker into a frenzy of questions and statements expressing frustration with the self. He is disgusted by his physical appearance, his loss of a sense of spirituality, his isolation. He feels trapped:

There are no more elegant redemptive plots.
Roaming about the ape house, I cannot tell which of us,
with naked, painful eyes, is shielded behind Plexiglas. (lines 41-43)

He works to understand the myths that explain his existence, “How can it be that it was Adam / who brought death into the world?” He becomes a caged animal capably of higher thought, “Roaming about the ape house, I am sweat and contemplation and breath.” He begins losing his grip on his ability to recognize order and desperately cries:

I am active and passive, darkness and light, chaste and corrupt.
I am martyr to nothing. I am rejected by nothing.
All the bloated clottings of a life—family disputes, lost inheritances,
vulgar lies, festering love, ungovernable passion, hope wrecked—
bleed out of the mind.
(lines 47-52)

After specifically noting the source of his personal pain, the father, and his passionate spiral searching for order within the self and for the world the speaker uses tenderness again as a tool for order. Except this time it has changed. The process of questioning and self-flagellation charges the move to tenderness with a different quality.

Pondering you,
as you chew on a raw onion and ponder me,
I am myself as a boy, showering with my father, learning not to be afraid,
spitting mouthfuls of water into the face of the loved one,
the only thing to suffer for. (lines 52- 56)

Here the speaker is no longer just looking, no longer meeting the animal for the first time, but is in a deeper state of thought. The image of the raw onion works to show the animal sustaining itself where previously it had passively looked, and vainly groomed itself. And now the animal ponders as well. The speaker’s sustenance is memory. A kind of resolution, an ability to maintain order within the self has returned as each character find their version of sustenance. The child is “learning not to be afraid.” This is not the same child who met the ape for the first time, untouched by life. This child is in the process of learning to deal with the disorder of life. He interacts with his world in a playful and assured way as he spits water in his father’s face. This leads to the climactic realization: suffering and disorder are a part of life that must be experienced or at least acknowledged before the love and order of an intimate relationship can be realized.

By moving outward through, empathy, compassion, and tenderness Cole is able to create a sense of order for the interior self. The end of the poem remains true to the complexities of life in that it is not a simple ending. The poet has not resolved his interior conflict permanently, suffering remains in the final resolution. What Cole does create for himself, is a tool to help deal with suffering.