Henri Cole's Gravity and Center: Selected Sonnets , 1994-2022 employs the 14-line room as a safe space to examine his relationships. Gorgeous and heart-wrenching as these sonnets are, his path is nothing new: some of the earliest male Italian sonnet writers also celebrated or bemoaned their adored, absent, or cruel male lovers in sonnets. Much gratitude to Unlikely Stories for publishing this essay in which I compare Henri Cole's sonnets to those of his Italian trecento counterparts.
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