Horror Vacui

by Heise, Thomas

• ISBN13: 9781932511321
• ISBN10: 1932511326
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-01
• Publisher: Sarabande Books

Summary

"These are ambitious, moving poems, deft, panged, and stunning."-Dean Young "Existential chilliness, mourning, and dread find a uniquely compelling voice in Thomas Heise's poetry. . . ."-Alan Williamson "Horror Vacui offers an often vertiginous account of how death imposes [an] irresistible fact on minds bent on both accommodating and resisting this one inevitable yet impossible truth. . . . And it's this property of being barely held together that makes Horror Vacui so striking. . . . an extraordinary mood piece."-Ray McDaniel In his haunting debut collection Horror Vacui, Thomas Heise explores the fear of empty space, a mysterious and abiding absence that is a pronounced presence in this poet's lyrical voice. Thomas Heise holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of California at Davis and a PhD from New York University. Currently he teaches at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
I.
Horror Vacui	3	(8)
II.
Obituary [first draft]	11	(2)
Examination	13	(4)
My Pieta	17	(2)
Plan B	19	(1)
Wreckage	20	(1)
Corrections	21	(2)
Examination	23	(4)
Obituary [revised]	27	(1)
Zombie	28	(2)
These New Days	30	(2)
The Remainder	32	(3)
III.
The Orchard of Orange Trees	35	(8)
IV.
Obituary [translated]	43	(1)
Examination	44	(3)
These New Days	47	(1)
The End of the Imaginary	48	(1)
Imaginary Sanitarium	49	(1)
Red Giant, White Dwarf	50	(2)
Epitaph X	52	(1)
Examination	53	(4)
The End of Travel	57	(3)
Ghazal for the Body	60	(4)
Rosary	64	(8)
V.
Exeat	72	(7)
These New Days	79	(5)
The Author	84