“These are ambitious, moving poems, deft, panged, and stunning.”—Dean Young

“Existential chilliness, mourning, and dread find a uniquely compelling voice in Thomas Heise's poetry. . . .”—Alan Williamson

"Horror Vacui offers an often vertiginous account of how death imposes [an] irresistible fact on minds bent on both accommodating and resisting this one inevitable yet impossible truth. . . . And it's this property of being barely held together that makes Horror Vacui so striking. . . . an extraordinary mood piece."—Ray McDaniel


In his haunting debut collection Horror Vacui, Thomas Heise explores the fear of empty space, a mysterious and abiding absence that is a pronounced presence in this poet's lyrical voice.