Astronaut
Lancashire, England: Arc Publications, 2000.
Grosuplje, Slovenia: Mondena Publishing, 2000.
Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002.
Publication History:
Astronautwas first published by Arc Publications in England in 2000. The book was subsequently short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Astronautwas also translated into Slovenian and published by Mondena Publishing in its "Lyrika" series in 2000 with an introduction by Tomaz Salamun.
Carnegie Mellon University Press published Astronautin the U.S. in 2002.
From the Reviews:
"Astronaut firmly situates Brian Henry among the constellation of those who are, 'raising not hell, / but the stakes.' ... Astronaut offers a solid and exemplary poetic world, one constructed somewhere between transcendence and realism ..." --Noah Gordon, Boston Review
"Brian Henry delineates the spaces between people that constitute their most intimate relationships ... He entices the reader into the hidden crevices and empty spaces of daily existence ... [and] offers his reader a disorienting clarity of vision ... Henry alludes to Holderlin's description of the poet as 'the priest of the invisible'--an apt description of his own achievement and highly evolved craft." --Elizabeth Eger, PN Review
"Brian Henry is one of the new breed of international poet-editor-critics. ... Henry changes register often. So, superficially, his work can resemble post-Ashberian games, but his solid grounding in the mainstream poetry world gives his poems an edge of plangency and soul that experimental work often lacks." --Poetry Review
"Brian Henry's debut ... perfects 'the art of voyage.' ... Henry's wildly comprehensive lexicon and stylistic bag of tricks take us traveling through traditional and experimental poetic worlds. His many-minded perspectives spin haptic and heady, formally restless poems 'the way ... only a diviner can navigate.' Few poems today induce aesthetic delirium and delight like Henry's best." --Christine Hume, American Letters & Commentary
"The diverse voices, monolithic images, and indefinable moods of Astronaut's sometimes maddeningly elusive beauty repay a long, lingering look. Henry is a unique new voice, subtle, original, affecting ..." --Lavonne Leong, Oxford Poetry
"Michael Palmer and Brian Henry, poets who are quite dissimilar and who belong to two different generations, ... construct poetics that 'dissolve' the authorial self, deliberately subverting the conventional genres of autobiography, self-portraiture and lyric confession. ... Henry, a younger poet, shares with Palmer a fascination with negativity, absence and aporia. ... Henry is a keen observer who writes from a constantly changing perspective, often employing the techniques of montage and catalogue and typically eschewing a fixed point of view." --Philip Nikolayev, Jacket
"Brian Henry, the Fulbright scholar, accomplished editor, critic and promising poet invites the reader into his wonderful collection Astronaut with an epigraph from Camus's The Fall: 'Yes, few creatures were more natural than I.' Astronaut is a voyage into the poet's organic creation of his multiple selves. Like Camus, Henry flitters back and forth between his profoundly acute, subjective consciousness and its perception of (and often construction of) the external, 'natural' world. ... this verse adeptly vacillates between styles, forms, and subjects. ... At first glance, Henry seems to position himself within the boundaries of traditionally Romantic ideals of the poet. Henry's poetry, though, obliquely deconstructs each of these ideals through the shifting sands of language and form. Both are on pyrotechnic display in Astronaut" --Omaar Hena, Metre
Read Philip Nikolayev's review of Astronaut in Jacket.
Read Noah Gordon's review of Astronaut in Boston Review.
Read Roddy Lumsden's review of Astronaut in Poetry Review.
Buy Astronaut (U.S. edition).
Buy Astronaut (UK edition).
