unfinishing
About this book
they come flying out from under your expectations / and once opened it is rain / and thinking a sandbar / always inventing a different script / never where you left it
This dream book of kaleidoscopic, holographic, mutagenic poems is haunted by the loops, aporias, and entanglements of time – memory, forgetting, oblivion, fortune telling, eternal (or not) returns, timelessness (however that may manifest), beginnings and endings (if indeed there are such things), and other spectral speculations where the intimate and the outward might exchange places.
With imagery both striking and nuanced, and language rich and strange, Brian Henderson encounters a hummingbird, a barred owl, a flood, a trapdoor, a table of contents, an empty rowboat, a nonexistent river, a room made of crystal, a heap of broken furniture, ecocatastrophe, and political debacle in mesmerizing poems that celebrate the strange and vertiginous musics of a kind of memory-ness invoked by the irretrievable.
These poems ask how the future can exist in the now, the now in the past. What is a future? How might we recognize one? And although the now may be completely empty, what are the selves we seem to become? In the archeology of now, unfinishing asks who we might have been – and who we might yet be.
Tools to learn more effectively
Saving Books
Keyword Search
Annotating Text
Listen to it instead
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Copyright
- CONTENTS
- PROLEPSIS
- ANICCA A JAN-KEN
- VANISHING HOUSES
- APRANIHITA
- VANISHING HOUSES
- LOBELIA CARDINALIS
- TRANSLATIONS FROM AN UNKNOWN LANGUAGE
- IMAGINARY INTERVAL
- PHANTOMANCY
- AND IF I LOOK BACK
- AFTER ALL THIS TIME
- TEXTS (AT THE END OF THE WORLD)
- HOW LIGHT WE ARE BECOMING
- SO THIS IS WHAT IT WAS LIKE
- COMBERS
- ON WHAT IS IN THE FIRST PLACE
- INTERFERENCE PATTERNS
- OUT OF THE FABRIC OF KNOWING
- INTERFEROMETER
- THE TIME IT TAKES SHADOWS TO FALL
- MUTAGENIC
- BENT WATER LIGHT SOMETHING
- HOLD THE PHONE
- ON AFTERLIVES
- VEILED THROUGH REVELATION
- WATER IS THE HOME OF KNIVES
- AT THE EDGE
- THE ARCHITECTURE OF FALLING
- MORE MISUNDERSTANDINGS
- SHEETS OF RAIN
- SOMNOLENT DUSK WHEEL
- I’M TALKING TO YOU TONIGHT FROM RADIO NOWHERE
- FORTUNE TELLER
- A KEY IN THE SHAPE OF A KITE
- DWELLING
- EXPECT BILOCATION
- KNOCKING
- NO HESITATION
- ANAHATA NADA
- ENTHEOGEN
- PHASE CONJUGATION MIRROR
- UNFINISHING
- PRESENT PERFECT
- SUNYATA OR THE REASON WE THOUGHT THINGS WERE HAPPENING
- KEY OF MOONLIGHT
- NIGHTVISION
- IN THE OBLIVION WORLD
- TRANCE ACCUMULATION
- COMMEMORATIVE
- SPEECHLESS
- RAFT
- OHM
- ON LOSING AND FINDING
- CATECHISM
- WHAT THE DEER KNOW
- WHAT EVERY STREAM KNOWS
- PHOTOGRAPH AT EVENING LOOKING WEST OUT TO SEA
- CHROMATIC CHATTER
- THERE IS A WAY
- THE MOMENT
- FINAL REPORT
- SPECTRAL DATA
- NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Frequently asked questions
- Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
- Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app