The Absence of Knowing

Author: Matthew Henriksen

Publisher: Black Ocean (2016)

A girl laughs like the birds and rides a bicycle into "horizons sinking slowly on their centers," despite—or in spite of the—the chaos around her. In Matthew Henriken's stirring follow-up to his debut, Ordinary Sun, he writes with an uninhibited resolve to explore intimate, everyday struggles and capture their reality in amber. Brokenness, anger, and the light of innocence power the poems of The Absence of Knowing. Meanwhile, a new beginning is captured in raw, smoldering, and cathartic expression, leaving an aftermath of aria despite discordant events.