Unfinishing

Brian Henderson has published twelve previous volumes of poetry including Nerve Language, which was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Awards. He lives in Markdale, Ontario.

"Brian Henderson meditates on the metaphysics of imagining, of making, in this odyssey of angels and falling shadows; he reminds me of Rilke and then of John Thompson, out on the Tantramar, both poets unfinishing their art, and Henderson reading what the charred-black ink permits: 'a fleet of crows / silently dipping their black oars in air.' Always is the poet unfinishing, but what he lets us glimpse of Beauty is – like Paradise – enough." George Elliott Clarke, author of Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir"Henderson employs the languages of science and philosophy – Eastern and Western – to trace the mind's engagement with a world composed of time, memory, mortality, and, ultimately, compassion and love. These are the qualities from which 'the fabric of knowing' and the fabric of these poems are woven." Randy Lundy, author of Field Notes for the Self and Blackbird Song"unfinishing is a work of caring intelligence and subtle craft. In Henderson's hands the things of this world flare; they crash in spanking-new image and metaphor and open in exact rhythms of something more fleeting, more persistent. A shining that takes us by surprise and pleasure." Dennis Cooley, author of Irene and Gibbous Moon"unfinishing is an amazing exercise in attention. Henderson moves with palpable acuity through a metaphysical wrecking yard of time and dream, of images, memories, and sensations, not simply as themselves but as hieroglyphs of a spiritual address. The sunyata of these poems opens the rusted-out doors of perception to ask us what we thought we knew and what we can possibly know." Fred Wah, author of Music at the Heart of Thinking"This is a masterful collection of vivid, delicate and yes, wise poems, poems of tender awareness and continual and energizing arrival. A book of profound intelligence, compassion and joy." The Fiddlehead