The inaugural volume in the new Spotlight poetry series, Where Shadows Will selects from twenty years of innovative poetry by writer, painter, and translator Norma Cole. Cole has been a fixture of the Bay Area scene since 1977, writing melodic and experimental poetry whose shadow-haunted landscapes embody an exploration of the relationship between language, self, and world. Cole was a member of the circle of poets around Robert Duncan and a fellow traveler of the language poets. Drawing on long out-of-print volumes and recent books-such as her acclaimed Spinoza in Her Youth (2002)-Where Shadows Will confirms Cole's place as a major avant-garde poet and a leading voice among contemporary women writers.

Reviewed in: American Book Review, Chicago Review, Toronto Globe & Mail, Jacket (jacketmagazine.com), Interim, Pleiades, Doublechange, Scout, Traffic, HOW2, WITZ: A Journal of Contemporary Poetics, The Stranger, Compound Eye and Rhizome.

"She is a poet of consummate intelligence, a deft and compassionate company, who may now not, in Robert Duncan's phrase, remember whether she 'read' or 'wrote' this wonderous book."—Robert Creeley

"Shadows demonstrates the continuity of [Cole's] efforts from poem to poem, book to book, year to year. . . [The collection] crystallizes questions from throughout Cole's career: to what extent is personal experience shared or universal, and what, exactly, is our 'backyard,' anyway? Ancient Egypt? The modern-day Congo? The entire solar system?"—Chris McCreary, The Poetry Project

"Some poets have a wide library of works, and you'll miss the brightest gems unless you look really closely. Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 takes the best of Norma Cole's work from over twenty years, and places it all in one collection as part of City Lights' Spotlight series. An excellent collection to start the series with, Where Shadows Will is a poetry reader's delight."—James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review

"Cole's verse ranges vastly in form and subject, with a large selection of prose poems. Her dialogue with contemporary French poetry is especially evident . . . Even with a half-hearted listen, it's easy to tell that Cole’s poetry is different. Where Shadows Will offers only the beginning of an introduction, a whetting of the palate."—Molossus

Norma Cole is a poet, painter, and translator. Her recent books include Do the Monkey, Spinoza in Her Youth, and NATURAL LIGHT. Her translations include Danielle Collobert's Journals, Fouad Gabriel Naffah's The Spirit God and the Properties of Nitrogen, and Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France. Born in Canada, Cole has lived in San Francisco since 1977.