Absence: Presence

Influenced by T'ang Era Classical poets (including Han Shan, Du Fu, Li Bai, and Wang Wei), the poems in Christien Gholson's Absence: Presence explore our collapsing world with the Daoist understanding that everything in the cosmos (Presence) appears out of and returns to an unknowable mysterious origin (Absence); and that we are continually shifting in and out of Absence and Presence-day to day, month to month, year to year, moment to moment. Alternatively playful and dark (and sometimes playfully dark), these accessible poems move through the cycle of the seasons, including death, work, dragons, war, coyotes, loss, mass shootings, ghost deer, love, drought, fever dreams and joy, all with a stunned and quiet awe at the beauty hidden everywhere in plain sight. Along the way, we come into contact with a character named No One, resembling the illusive monk-poet Han Shan, seeking answers in the midst of our collapsing civilization, trying to move toward a larger experience of the self, a self that includes community, the natural world, and even the night cosmos, cultivating, like the Classical Chinese poets, a broader and deeper experience of the self.