Henri Cole’s Orphic Paris combines autobiography, diary, essay, and prose poetry with photographs to create a new form of elegiac memoir. With Paris as a backdrop, Cole, an award-winning American poet explores with fresh and penetrating insight the nature of friendship and family; poetry and solitude; the self and freedom.

Cole writes of Paris, For a time, I lived here, where the call of life is so strong. My soul was colored by it. Instead of worshiping a creator or man, I cared fully for myself, and felt not guilt and confessed nothing, and in this place, I wrote, I was nourished, and I grew. Written under the tutelary spirit of Orpheus–mystic, oracular, entracing–Cole’s Orphic Paris is an intimate Paris journal and a literary commonplace book that is a touching, original, brilliant account of the city of Paris.