Brian Henry is the author of four previous books of poetry: Astronaut (2000), American Incident (2002), Graft (2003), and Quarantine (2006). His poems have appeared in many magazines around the world, including Jacket, New American Writing, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Volt. He has co-edited Verse since 1995, and he co-edited The Verse Book of Interviews (2005). He currently teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Richmond in Virginia.
In The Stripping Point Brian Henry, whose Quarantine was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, moves through extremes of formal invention and referentiality in two poetic series immersed in the lust and language of the everyday. Set at a paper mill in the 1990s, “More Dangerous Than Dying” charts the vicissitudes of a relationship that is simultaneously new and at its depleted end. In “The Stripping Point,” language confronts and interleaves desire, enacting the dissipation of both as the poem is "stripped" as it progresses. Once again, Brian Henry raises the stakes for contemporary poetry.
