The Reading Warehouse

Dark Glasses is a collection of modern poetry from Dan Hendrickson, an author forever trapped between the future and the past. Hendrickson cut his teeth in the poetry business by pulling on a pair of prescription sunglasses and writing four books of post-modern poetry under his pen name, Henry Rifle. These books were a fusion of absurdist comedy, jazz poetry and low-rent philosophy. Dark Glasses builds on this and attempts to sum up the experience of and all the reasons for adopting a pseudonym in the first place; in addition to what was gained and what was lost.

Behind dark glasses, Hendrickson came to understand who he was, both as a poet and a human being. That apprenticeship taught him many things about who he was and who he wasn't. As he writes in Dark Glasses: "It takes a long time for a negative to turn into a color print. I like to think I'm almost there."

Furthermore, Dark Glasses raises the stakes considerably, moving Hendrickson's poetry from random observations about the state of the world and witty asides into matters of state, philosophy and personal identity. Vision is the overarching theme of the book and it's meant to serve as a challenge to others to look at the world differently, and by doing so to perhaps find ways to see themselves differently as well.