The New Yorker: Poetry

Henri Cole Reads Louise Glück

Host: Kevin Young (New Yorker Poetry Editor)
Guest: Henri Cole (Poet)
Date: October 22, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, poetry editor Kevin Young welcomes acclaimed poet Henri Cole for a discussion centered on Louise Glück’s poem “Vita Nova,” as well as a reading and reflection on Cole’s own poem “Figs.” The conversation spans themes of memory, myth, spring and mortality, lyric tradition, and the timeless pull of poetry. This episode also explores Glück’s aesthetic legacy, her approach to mythmaking, and Cole’s personal process in writing sonnets with a public and private dimension.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Selection of Louise Glück’s “Vita Nova”

• Why Henri Chose the Poem

  • Cole was “impressed that it seems to track between the present, memory, and dreamscape,” noting its sentence-by-sentence accessibility layered with total difficulty (02:48).
  • The poem’s place in Glück’s life coincided with a parallel period in Cole’s own—“I feel like I’m in a Vita Nova, perhaps so” (03:41).

• Reading of “Vita Nova” by Henri Cole

  • [03:51–06:04]
  • The poem meditates on spring, awakening, memory of childhood, the tension of new beginnings, and the intertwining of beauty and death.
  • Notably, the final lines—“Surely spring has been returned to me this time, not as a lover but a messenger of death. Yet it is still spring. It is still meant tenderly.”—anchor the poem in ambiguous renewal.

2. Memory, Dream, and the Ambiguity of “You”

• Dream/Memorial Space

  • Cole sees the poem as blurring memory and dream: “There’s this dream of remembered childhood. So it is a dream of a—memory, I guess” (06:43–07:02).

• The Ambiguous Addressee

  • Cole dwells on the “you” in the poem: “It could be the ex beloved, it could be spring, it could be the new life, it could be all those things. Also the mother creeps in there...” (07:29–07:41; 08:00).

• Memorable Quote

  • Cole: “...those words, ‘you saved me, you’—all stressed words... it’s very striking. It begins with an attack, you might say, in the way that a Hopkins poem might begin” (08:00–08:19).

3. Myth, Dante, and the Structure of Renewal

• Dante’s Influence

  • Young brings up Dante’s Vita Nuova as source of both title and structure, calling it an “interesting, almost prologue to the Divine Comedy” (09:24).
  • Cole notes the title as the principal connection—“that’s a book that... is a hybrid of prose and poetry... that deals with... love poem, you could say. And this is sort of a life poem, you know” (09:46–10:13).

• Glück and Myth

  • Young: “...this idea of ferryboats... I start to think of Dante... this idea of return and spring and return from the underworld...” (10:28).
  • Cole appreciates the mythic quality of Glück’s lineation: “...it gives it the quality of myth because there’s an absoluteness about each statement, each utterance that feels complete in some way” (11:34–12:35).

4. Lyrical Tone, Loss, and Connection

• Glück’s Approach to Lyric

  • Cole: “She was a model of the idea of the poem as a shell placed to the ear with a single message for a single listener. To me, that’s the most pure experience of the lyric poem” (15:08).
  • Cole remembers Glück as someone who “relished her friendships” and feared the Nobel would disrupt her relationships: “She managed to keep that from happening. I think it was very difficult” (15:54–16:45).

• Memorable Moment: Nobel Presentation

  • Cole recounts Glück being presented her Nobel medal in the snowy backyard during the pandemic—“it had snowed... I stood and made a little video of it from up on the top terrace of the triple decker where she lived. That was an amazing experience... I felt really honored by her friendship” (15:54–16:45).

5. Henri Cole’s “Figs” – Reading and Analysis

• Origin and Reading

  • Cole says, “Well, I ate some figs this morning and I thought about this poem. You know, I had some figs sitting on the counter... They’re just a big part of Southern California life” (17:46).
  • [18:06–19:07]: Cole reads “Figs,” which overlays domestic observation with mythic, ethical, and existential questioning.

• Discussion of Voice and Scale

  • Cole describes blending lyric autobiography with “a public dimension... I like to flip the camera and observe the world around me. I’m not a stadium poet, I’m a lyric poet. But still, I like to think I can speak to the predicament of humans” (19:55).

Notable Quotes

• Young (on Cole’s style): “I love that evocation and that willingness in such a short space to bring us this other set of voices” (19:55).
• Cole: “...I ask my students to try and change the register of speech in their poems. To speak in the vernacular, but to try and have a moment that either goes low or goes high. And that’s what I was trying to do here” (20:21).

6. The Art of the Sonnet

• Form and Function
  • Cole discusses releasing lyric poems from linearity: “I want them to have switchbacks on a trail... or film, you know... so I make myself get up from the poem and often do something else... just so when I sit down, I’m out of the linear mode” (23:46).
• On Ending with Questions and Exposition
  • Cole references Robert Frost’s “Design” and its two-question finale, musing, “I thought that must be a sonnet trick to end with... I can’t do that again!” (22:09).

Further Insights and Reflections

• Symbolism of Figs

  • For Cole, figs symbolize fertility and abundance but, as they rot, suggest “the Freudian idea of the id... a cauldron of excitations” (24:07).
  • “Our days are full of ID right now, Kevin. But hopefully the pure composure of 14 lines can modulate that ID factor...” (24:36).

• On Sonnets as Breath and Echo

  • Cole: “I think of it kind of organically as a really deep inhale and then an exhale... This is a poem in my book The Other Love...” (25:42).

• About The Other Love

  • Cole’s latest collection aims for a “human scale” of lyric, sometimes with a public dimension and often touching on the love of oneself rather than romantic completion (26:12).

• Prescience and Timelessness

  • Young and Cole discuss the dual prescient and timeless quality of the best poems: “They have to say something that has that echo. And then some of the echo is across time” (26:51).

• Sonnets and the Beloved

  • When asked if every sonnet has a beloved, Cole demurs: “I don’t think there is one here. Maybe my love of figs... but... this is trying to be a little more ethical or something... trying not to be about me in a way” (28:07).

Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• Henri Cole on Glück’s lyric:
  “She was a model of the idea of the poem as a shell placed to the ear with a single message for a single listener.” (15:08)

• Kevin Young, on “Vita Nova”:
  “It’s so delicate on the one hand, and then also has this kind of rushing quality, I feel, especially in those stanzas of what I think of as memory.” (06:04)

• Henri Cole, on voice:
  “I’m not a stadium poet, I’m a lyric poet. But still, I like to think I can speak to the predicament of, you know, humans.” (19:55)

• Henri Cole on Glück’s Nobel ceremony:
  “She was presented with the medal in the snowscape of her backyard in Cambridge. And I stood and made a little video of it from up on the top terrace... That was an amazing experience.” (15:54–16:45)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Guest Introduction & Poem Selection – 01:46–02:38
• Discussion of “Vita Nova” – 02:48–03:42
• Reading “Vita Nova” – 03:51–06:04
• Discussion: Memory, Dream, Myth in “Vita Nova” – 06:04–15:08
• Reminiscence about Louise Glück – 15:08–16:45
• Reading “Figs” by Henri Cole – 18:06–19:07
• Analysis of “Figs” and Sonnet Form – 19:55–25:42
• About The Other Love and broader poetic concerns – 26:12–29:01

Conclusion

This episode offers a deeply personal and intellectual engagement with Louise Glück’s poetics, especially as seen through “Vita Nova,” and with Henri Cole’s process in composing and thinking about lyric poetry and sonnets. The conversation captures the pulse of contemporary poetry’s engagement with tradition, memory, and voice, while also honoring a distinct lineage and legacy.