The Absence of Knowing
In Matt 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.
Matthew Henriksen was born in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1977. He is the author of two books of poetry from Black Ocean, The Absence of Knowing (2015) and Ordinary Sun (2011). His poems have been anthologized recently in Hick Poetics and The Volta Book of Poets. A co-editor of the online poetry journal Typo, he also edited Another Part of the Flood: Poems, Stories, and Correspondence of Frank Stanford, which appeared in Fulcrum #7. A bookseller and adjunct instructor, he currently lives in the Arkansas Ozarks, where he assists the Northwest Arkansas Prison Stories Project and coaches under-6 girls soccer.
