The poems of Douglas Cole’s Blue Island are wrought in the rich topography of film noir— employing the textures of city streets at night, Cole’s images are often looming and restless, even sublime, weaving the rhythm and mood of Miles Davis’s jazz, while hard blues and hard streets pervade throughout. Douglas Cole’s book is sweeping, ardent, and skillfully rendered.
~Jeffrey Alfier, author of The Red Stag at Carrbridge, The Storm Petrel and many more books of poetry, as well as Founder and Co-editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review
Readers will find themselves underlining Douglas Cole’s rich and many-sided new poems in the collection, The Blue Island. Cole is a masterful poet of both long-march poems and brief lyric pieces. Cole’s poems are oceanic, “full of force and fury.”
~ Red Shuttleworth , author of Straight Ahead, Homeward, High Plains Fandago and many more works of poetry and drama
Douglas Cole’s poems appear on the page like high-speed films of flowers bursting open. The language in The Blue Island is rapid-fire, and you’re swept away.
~ Edward Harkness, author of Beautiful Passing Lives, Ice Children, and The Law of the Unforseen
The Blue Island is a cornucopia of a book, ranging from fine lyrics to long narratives. It has everything from fantasy to hard eyed examinations of life. You’ll find so much here for the reading, so don’t miss out.
~Bradley Strahan, distinguished professor and award-winning poet is the author of six poetry collections, including This Art of Losing, and A Parting Glass and is the Publisher of Visions International.
The Galway Review 