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Barbara
Henning
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Update 2009
Barbara Henning
Thirty Miles To Rosebud
depicts a series of imploding families and fast interstates.
Barbara Henning's landscapes-- a rust-belt childhood, a
nearly forgotten East Village Bohemia and the arid Southwest
streaked with the setting sun—are populated by runaways,
lost loves and lifelong betrayals. In this remarkable novel,
Henning's eye for detail and her emotional honesty enables
the past to loom in the rear-view mirror long after the car
has sped by.
—Donald Breckenridge
This On the Road story zig zags the America grain, a
rebellious woman’s experience, and the consequences of the
Vietnam era. Barbara Henning’s clean, stark realism
rejoices and laments the left and the lost, what can and
can’t be found in time and mind.
—Gloria Frym
This remarkable, gracefully muscular, novel pays homage
to being, writing, attending, loving. Henning’s low key,
precise, observances are downright addictive in their power
to hold, carry and reward.
—Lynn Crawford
One of Barbara Henning’s great accomplishments is the
voice we came to appreciate in You, Me, and the Insects.
It presents her world with a candor both companionable and
profound, both disengaged and intimate. She has no agenda
but to tell her own story, which is the story physical,
emotional, and spiritual, of her generation. Wisdom enters
her telling as easily as a deer crosses a road. And many
deer do, because this is a book in line with Celine’s crazed
Castle To Castle, Douglas Woolf’s Wall to Wall,
Kerouac’s romantic On The Road, Hunter Thompson’s
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Thirty Miles
to Rosebud stands with all of them as one of the great
memoir road novels of our time.
—Steve Katz
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BARBARA HENNING is the author of two novels, You, Me and
the Insects and Black Lace. Her books of
poetry include My Autobiography, Detective
Sentences, Love Makes Thinking Dark,
Smoking in the Twilight Bar, as well as numerous
chapbooks and a series of photo-poem pamphlets. A collection
of prose and poetry, Cities & Memory, is
forthcoming from Chax Press. A native Detroiter and a long
time resident of New York City, she now lives in Tucson,
Arizona.
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Update 2008:
Dear Friends,
If you are interested in reading a midsection from the
fictional memoir (or novelized autobiography), You, Me & the
Insects, which I was writing while I was in India last year, ten
pages or so is now published on a internet magazine at the following
address: http://www.markszine.com/
A little bit of Mysore & Detroit. Let me know what you
think.
Barbara |
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Excerpt from "Smoking in the Twilight Bar" by Barbara
Henning:
Published 1988 by United Artists; written early
early 80's
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SATIN RIBBONS
A strobe spins light on the
girl's black velvet skirt and high heels. She stands in the
middle of a ballroom, listens to Lorraine talk about the man
who used to tie her up with satin ribbons. And she's amazed
at the design the wrinkles form around Lorraine's eyes, like
snowflakes. They remind her of her mother's eyes when she
was dying on the sofa. Mother picked up a high heel, threw
it, put a crack in the plaster. The girl stood across the
room, looking at the lines on the walls, at her mother's
wrinkles, and listening to her moan. Father would not wake
up. Satin ribbons, satin ribbons and wrinkles. (Smoking
in the Twilight Bar 1988)
from
FABRIC REINS
one of a series of revisions of "Satin Ribbons"
And
garments of vengeance while the sun stands still and the
moon keeps a bird's eye-view of the upper room where men
talk. My waters are bound up in their thick clouds even
though I have lot my children and am desolate with this
unprofitable talk. The only thing worse than being talked
about is being born into trouble—he comes along and ties me
on the fringe with a band of blue. Some girls die young,
couch as couch can be, easier to pick up, harder to drop,
like a low shoe or an eye for an eye: what every young man
should know, neither written nor spoken—if at first you
don't, you will always know how they cry and throw dust into
the air. If he wants his dreams to come true, he must wake
up and fill me with wind. Some people wake up and find
themselves female. Others wake up and find themselves late.
Or a pretty package just for Adam and his ribbon of
blue—(Love Makes Thinking Dark 1995) |
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BARBARA HENNING,
is a poet and fiction writer, author of two novels and seven books of
poetry. Her latest book of poems, My
Autobiography, was published in 2007 by United Artists. Cities
& Memory is
forthcoming from Chax Press. Two novels, You
Me and the Insects (2005)
and Black Lace (2001)
were both published by Spuyten Duyvil . Other works include a series of
photo-poem pamphlets; Detective
Sentences (S.D.,
2001), In Between (Spectacular
Diseases, England); Me
& My Dog(Poetry New York, 1999); Love
Makes Thinking Dark (United
Artists, 1995); The
Passion of Signs (Leave
Books, 1994);Smoking in the Twilight Bar (United
Artists, l988). Poems and stories have been published in many magazines,
includingPoetry International, Jacket Magazine, the Paris
Review, Fiction International, The Brooklyn Rail, The World, Talisman,
Lingo, Shiny, Not Enough Night, Hanging Loose and
many others. During the early nineties, she was the editor of Long
News in the Short Century, a
journal of art and writing.
Barbara is the mother of two grown
children, Linnée Snyder and Michah Sapertein. Barbara
is Professor Emerita at Long Island University in Brooklyn. She was born
in Detroit, relocated to New York City in the early eighties and now
lives in Tucson, Arizona. She is presently teaching for Naropa
University and the University of Arizona. Her blog address is http://barbarahenning.blogspot.com
Here are some pictures
from Barbara...
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