Dismantled Catechism

New City Lit has reviewed Matthew Henriksen's ORDINARY SUN. If you haven't picked up this book yet, here's a taste of what you're missing (from Kelly Forsythe's review):

“Ordinary Sun,” separated into nine sections, functions under Henriksen’s idea of a “dismantled catechism,” the breaking down of the ordinary and commonplace into extreme, surprising close-ups of perception. He writes:

Sometimes she’d touch
a body in her empty bed.

A stranger’s face, a dark
spot on the wall, watched
her as if from a mirror

and behind the face a hand
held a brush for her hair.

The rawness of imperfection in this portrait helps the reader to push past the veils of the physical world to enter into a painful but graceful emotional landscape. In the title section, which is also the final portion of “Ordinary Sun,” Henriksen motions for the reader to more actively re-experience with him: “The body moved above the water / and the water was cold. / It made the sirens roar.” His associations become stronger and assertive, though still surreal and immediate.

*****

Matthew will be reading from Ordinary Sun at Nightbird Books on Thursday April 21 at 7pm. 

Update on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 09:57PM by Nikkita Cohoon

Listen to an interview with Matthew about Ordinary Sun here.