Absence On Water, by Michael Grodesky

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features. In Absence On Water, Michael Grodesky beautifully crafts elements of lyric and description in an expressive syntax that explores dialectics such as absence and presence. The poems consider how the absence of one thing may reveal the presence of another, in much the way silence is needed for the creation of sound. The poems are grounded in minimalism as a world view and reflect a voice that is shaped by the use of space and silence. Readers may experience an interesting tension between quiet diction and intense images. The collection is centered around topics which are intensely human and gently address strong emotions that touch issues such as suicide and bullying, as well as family issues of loss and the emergence of hope. Michael Grodesky is a poet and photographer whose poems have appeared in Cathexis Northwest, BlazeVOX, Stepping Stones and others. His work has also appeared in Urban Textures, a collection of photography and poetry published with his husband, photographer Jim Simandl. In 2021, he self-published his first chapbook Dissimilation. He lives in Seattle where he is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Washington.