Lessness

Brian Henry

In Lessness everything is in ruins—machines, landscapes, buildings, bodies, histories, and language. In terse elegies and effaced text, Lessness forces us to question the body, and through it the stability of the knowable. All builds toward a lengthy, strangely gentle “wreckage,” where the surrender to inevitable infestations does not negate small triumphs.

“[N]ot only does Henry write about the thinghoodedness of everyday life, and about actual encounters undergone, but he also writes about these elements without damping down any of the emotional, physical, and intellectual aspects of his relationship with his world.” —Karla Kelsey, Constant Critic

“What impresses the most is the fact that Henry is still experimenting and growing and there is a genuine excitement preceding each new book. As he has proven so far, there is little in language or subject matter that cannot find its way into the poetic idiom.” —John Findura, Cutbank