Henri Cole's last three books have shown a continuously mounting talent. In his new book, Touch , written with an almost invisible but ever-present art, he continues to render his human topics--a mother's death, a lover's addiction, war--with a startling clarity. Cole's new poems are impelled by a dark knowledge of the body--both its pleasures and its discontents--and they are written with an aesthetic asceticism in the service of truth. Alternating...