The patterns and tensions of desire and love are figured here as a series of intimate encounters with animals-a koi "defining itself, like a large white/ flower, by separation from me"-and with a feminine other embodied in Japanese cultural reference: "I tied a paper mask onto my face/ my lips almost inside its small red mouth." Cole, whose last book was 1998's acclaimed The Visible Man, follows circuitous mythic paths into barely remembered childhood years spent in Japan, in search of an Ur-moment that will explain or mitigate the death of the poet's father.
Making good on his biography's pointed reference to his Japanese birthplace, Cole spent 2001–2 living in Kyoto on a fellowship from the US-Japan Friendship Commission, an experience that tinges this careful book of formal verse with neo-Orientalism.
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