Tom Hennen

Tom's a real poet. The moment I picked up his book "Darkness Sticks to Everything," I wanted to read poetry again.

Every poem in the book is admirable,
some only a little more so than others.

I found Tom by accident. I wasn't looking for him, I wasn't looking for poetry at all. I was reading history, psychology, a little fiction, this and that, all high-minded stuff for sure, but I'd given up on poetry.

I'd given up on poetry because every poem I read seemed to be pretty much like the poem I'd read before and the poem I read before seemed like the poem I'd read before that. Each poem seemed poured into a pre-existing form and what was poured was made of a ready-mix suffering compound that smelled faintly of vanilla. The poems I was reading were all concrete and no tree.

This is probably illegal--taking a picture of one of Tom's poems and putting it up for others to read--but I'm going to do it anyway to show you how real his poetry is. It's a real poem and can be found stuck onto pg. 64.