“Slowly Rushing Absent Mind” explores themes of origin and nature through poems about family history and the natural world. This collection explains poetry through poetry by using different forms—the ghazal, the prose poem, the sonnet and the lyric, to convey an awareness of a deeper consciousness. These poems seek to fill the space in the air above your shoulder at which the retail clerk stares as he hands you your change and wishes you good day. “The world we know,” Foucault explains, “is a profusion of entangled events;” these poems are meant to hint at a true beginning, one at which only the most exhaustive of genealogical research could possibly arrive, yet one that is intrinsic in the details of everyday life. / University of New Brunswick, Theses, Master of Arts