Barbara Henning, Digigram

Raining

—a full moon—wake up late—open my mail—a refund check—damp and cold—off to the credit union—an American flag strikes the flag pole—on Avenue B—an archbishop guides parishones—catholic-leaning alternatives—for girl scout cookies—during the crusades—thousands of children marched to their death—children crowding—into the earth school—a lanky guy wearing earmuffs—makes the air quotes with his fingers—says the word “safe”—at 9 pm the storm thins—brownish fog—the outlook for 2016 somewhat gloomy—German business leaders urge Russians—uphold a cease-fire—in the Ukraine—all agree—it’s going to stay warm now—walking home—on Avenue A—a man asks—do you want cocaine—

25 Feb 2016

The poems that make up Brooklyn poet and editor Barbara Henning’s latest poetry collection, Digigram (New York NY: United Artists Books, 2020), are built as curious collage-accumulations, quick poem-sketches that stitch and string together a series of connected and unconnected phrases, thoughts, descriptions and ideas. The poems emerge through the accumulation and the rhythms, the immediate thoughts and moments that blend threads of the intimate, the immediate, the domestic and the political, writing about where the dishes came from, walking down Avenue A, overheard conversation, newspaper reports and the emergence of Presidential candidate Donald Trump. As the poem “It All Depends” begins: “—upon a wizened old woman—missing two front / teeth—an old skull cap—big men’s levis—full of holes—a / shopping cart—no tax loopholes—she scowls at me, / then apologizes—trains seem safer than the 80s—I / say—depends on who you are—and where you are—true, / true [.]” The effect of her hyphenated sketches provide an immediacy to her poems, almost a point-form journal-entry effect, comparable to that of New York poet Stacy Szymaszek’s Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals (Albany NY: Fence Books, 2016) [see my review of such here]. These poems provide both a portrait of a particular time, and an examination of where we currently stand, threads that continue across 2020 as easily as 2016, 2017 and 2018, when these poems were first composed. The world has changed, but it is still the same world.

What I find interesting, also, as she writes in her “Process Note” at the end of the collection, is that this collection was originally prompted by Body Sweats:The Uncensored Writings of Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, edited by Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo (MIT Press, 2011):

In 2016, I picked up a collection of writing and art by the Dadaist, Elsa Von Freytag-Lorenhaven, also known as the Baroness. I pored over this book, laughing at the way she took William Carlos Williams to task (old observation minted wisdom). She was the ultimate beat/punk artist, scoffing at bourgeois society. Reading her poems, I thought to myself—they are like ecliptic telegrams to the world. At the time I was collecting poetic material from my journals, arranging, rearranging and collaging in news from the days before and around. Meanwhile I felt desperate—as did many others—about the political situation unfolding in the country. Trump had not yet been elected, but the hate on mainstream media was shocking. Then he won the election—how horrifying. Greed, wealth, ignorance and hate arm-in-arm. While I’m nowhere near as anti-establishment or as abrasive as the Baroness, I did pick up on her rhythms and started translating my poems into ecliptic digital messages that I called “digigrams”.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tony Iantosca

Tony Iantosca is a person who writes poems and teaches English composition and creative writing at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Poems have appeared in 6x6, Lungfull!, ThoseThatThis, Death and Life of Great American Cities, a Perimeter, among others. His first full-length collection of poems, Shut Up, Leaves was published by United Artists Books in November 2015. Previous collections include Team Burnout (Overpass Books) and Naked Forest Spaces (Third Floor Apartment Press). He holds an MFA from Long Island University in Brooklyn.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first chapbook helped me begin to think of single poems as part of a larger project, and then to think of what that larger project's main concerns are and how to work with and sometimes against those concerns. Other times I try to write poems that make fun of the tendencies that I see in my own writing and interests. But none of that would have been possible without seeing the poems presented as a book. It makes palpable and literal something I tell students all the time, which is that they should look at their writing in the third person. With my most recent full-length book, Shut Up, Leaves, it felt good to make use of the process I'd used in compiling poems for smaller chapbooks 

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I first came to poetry during high school. I was part of the creative writing club in my high school. I'm not sure what attracted me to poetry as opposed to another genre, but I had some very dear friends in the creative writing club. It was generally the student club that more punks and hippies joined, so I liked it for that reason too. 

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I don't generally set out to start a writing project. I normally decide after I've accumulated a handful of similar poems that any given project should continue and expand. It's interesting to see how all of the reading I do--which is by no means limited to poetry--can begin to shape the concerns I grapple with in the composition of a new set of poems. It takes quite a long time for me to know if the final shape of a poem should resemble the lines written hurriedly in a notebook, or if I should isolate and foreground only a few words or sentiments. So sometimes the final looks identical to the mess in the notebook, whereas other times everything's been rearranged, often because I'm trying to fine tune the lines to be identical to the poems which came out right the first time.    

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
More recently, the poem begins with speech. I'm interested in how speech can become unmoored from its original context and setting. It's hard to generalize about whether or not short pieces become longer ones, or vice versa, but most recently my poems exist as parts of a larger series. The long or serial poem helps me figure out how many different ways there are to express the same idea. As a lot of my poetry deals with received ideas about the world, this can mean that I take notes on stray phrases I hear on the street, or that I work through outlining a literary trope in the abstract and try to make it sound a little off. I used to do much more compiling, but even then I feel like I must have been writing the same poem a million times in a row.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings, though recently I haven't been doing that many. Last year I didn't attend that many readings either (I needed a break) so that might have something to do with it. Public readings are definitely a part of my creative process. They help me hear what's working and what isn't, but so do one-on-one meetings I have with friends who've been kind enough to read what I'm working on and tell me what they think. I'd also say that hearing my friends give readings is helpful, somehow, though I'm not sure how. Maybe because it keeps me in touch with the greater poetry scene in New York. 

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Many of my poems retell familiar narratives, but do so in a way that attempts to call attention to the assumptions present in those narratives. In doing this, the reader might be able to examine what types of cultural assumptions exist in American literature as a whole, and they might be able to ask how that reflects on our world and where we are now. I'm referring to assumptions about the supremacy of the individual in our society, and how that tendency may seep into the figure of the author or the singular protagonist in our literature. Often when one articulates what a speaker or author assumes about reality it can sound totally insane. Other poems articulate tendencies that may exist instead only in a societal or political narrative (as opposed to in literature). How can I as an author inhabit such ways of making meaning while also defacing them? In the midst of such concerns I still try to show, or reveal, a subjectivity behind these broad narratives and assumptions, and that's me and my actual worries and concerns and heartbreaks. Hopefully that prevents a reading that sees these cultural tendencies as totalizing.

But those are only the most recent concerns. I have other projects that attempt to say exactly what I mean in a way that escapes the idea of the poem--plain unadorned speech. Some poems in Shut Up, Leaves are very emotional but try to keep sentimentality at bay. As I mentioned before, it's worth it to make fun of feelings while expressing those feelings at the same time.  
 
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
It's both the larger culture's task to figure that out and the writer's. I really think that poets in particular should not think of poetry or the poetry community as an inaccessible, specialized domain, even if that's comfortable for us. Doing so reinforces the isolation from the larger culture that writers often feel and sometimes disingenuously bemoan. At the same time, changing the larger culture and all its problems is a process that would necessarily change the poetry being written within that supposed culture or "subculture." I think both should happen so that we can one day teach poetry to people starting from preschool. Maybe that way I would never have to hear another person say "I don't get poetry."   

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It is essential. I've been meeting intermittently with the poet Lisa Rogal at this place in Brooklyn called Junior's. We have a beer and exchange long poems and help each other find ways of structuring them. We've both been working on long poems recently, so it's a particularly good match. She's been a huge help.   

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Once you've accumulated a whole bunch of writing that you know works well, go back and read it and figure out why it works well. 

Another great piece of advice is to try to undermine comfortable tendencies that you have in your writing as you're writing something new. If you feel yourself wanting to write a line, try thinking and writing the opposite of that line. I've found this helpful for myself because it opens up some other space, other ways of seeing, that never would have occurred to me. I forget who told me this originally. It was probably Lewis Warsh. 

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Unfortunately I don't have a typical writing routine. I can go a long time without writing, which both helps and hurts. A typical day begins with me waking up and eating granola, listening to the news, and looking out the window. After that I get on my bike and go to teach or plan a lesson or tutor someone. In between classes or tutoring sessions, there's often a lot of time. Sometimes something comes to me during those intervals, and sometimes this will happen every day for a week and then abruptly stop.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
If that happens, I make myself write and make myself accept the fact that whatever comes out is likely going to suck for a little while, at least until I can get back into some kind of practice. I go back pretty often to Bernadette Mayer's Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters. I also like to return to Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms (translated by Matvei Yankelevich). Something about those two books reminds me how many possibilities are available to writing, even if both authors are working with very different concerns.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Old rugs.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Many of my friends are painters and many are musicians, still others study philosophy. Conversations with them about their own work influence me tremendously, even though I probably can't name directly the way that influence happens.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I'm reading an excellent book by my friend Bruno Gulli called Labor of Fire. It's been helpful to think of writing and poetry as labor, and not to think of labor as a concept limited or restricted by economic structures, but as something that precedes and exceeds those structures.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I'd like to go into one of those caves carved out by the ocean.  

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
If I could pick any other occupation, I'd like to be the park ranger in a public park in a city somewhere. I think it would be nice to spend that much time outside. Also that way I could let people get away with all sorts of activities that are prohibited in public parks at the moment. But maybe that would get me fired.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I wrote a paper in college about the hip hop duo Pete Rock and CL Smooth. I wrote about their hit song "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)." The teacher loved the essay and told me I should major in writing. At the time I wanted to become a professional activist, but I figured there were other ways of doing that and being a writer at the same time. Writing essays was also a lot of fun, and then as time went on I began to take poetry much more seriously.      

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book was called Story of the Lost Child, the last in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series. I think it's the best of the four books by Ferrante, especially the section about the author's experience of the 1980 Irpinia earthquake. Also, Matvei Yankelevich's Some Words for Dr. Vogt, recently out from Black Square Editions, is great. I also read George Oppen's Of Being Numerous, which I'm told is related to Matvei's book somehow. All of these have been important books, and I imagine I'll go back to them quite a bit over the years.

I saw a good film about the vigilante groups in Michoacan, Mexico. They arose to combat both the state police and armed forces and the drug cartels. It was ultimately a failed project led by a pediatric doctor who decided to arm his community, and the director does a nice job making sure the audience feels no allegiance to anyone.      

19 - What are you currently working on?
Most recently, I've been working on a set of poems under the heading "Bad Poetry." These poems tackle political issues that arise in everyday life. I'm interested in whether it's possible for me to write an overtly political poem, and whether that poem can pose as a bad poem (by feeling unedited, or lazy) while still somehow working. It's hard to fake laziness and it's equally hard to make a poem have a message without the poem being kind of boring. So the poems take lots of editing. Maybe they'll never be published, and maybe there's a good reason for that, but I think it's important for me to play with text in this really difficult way if only to keep the broader experiments outside of this project moving along.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Barbara Henning

Barbara Henning is the author of three novels, seven collections of poetry and four chapbooks. Her most recent books of poetry are A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press), A Swift Passage (Quale Press), Cities and Memory (Chax Press) and a collection of object-sonnets, My Autobiography (United Artists). She is also the editor of Looking Up Harryette Mullen and The Collected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins. She lives in New York City and teaches for writers.com and Long Island University in Brooklyn, where she is Professor Emerita.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different? 
My first book was Smoking in the Twilight Bar.  I wrote these poems when I was living in Detroit in the late 70’s, early 80’s.  Lewis Warsh published the collection as a United Artist book.  A first book is important because it is first, and this book helped set me on my path of writing.  I started writing these poems because I had visions of my past as ghostly, almost as if past events were ongoing in the present. I could walk into a room and experience my past self as a shadow.  I wrote many of the poems about moments and places where that feeling was strong. Others were about the Cass Corridor in Detroit and a group of on-the-fringe friends. “The Twilight Bar” was a neon sign inside a club (Alvin’s Finer), a place where we used to hang out, dance, read poetry and commune. The sign came from another more local bar that had closed long ago.  That more local place was what I had in mind for the poems. The poems were narrative and somewhat surreal in overall effect.  When composing these poems I went back and forth between lined verse and prose poetry, ending finally with prose.

My new book is A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press 2015).  These are lined poems and they were composed initially as journal entries in 2012, responding and arising from events in my life and world/national events.  There was a particular procedure used for researching and collaging text from The New York Times into the poems.  These two projects, my first book and my last book, are very different and yet both used events from my life, as part of the process.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I grew up in a household where I never witnessed my parents reading anything other than the local newspaper.  My father had a GED and my mother was the only one of nine to graduate from high school. But there were a few books in the house and my mother took my brother and me to the library every week; I developed a relationship with books and words. As an adolescent, I was a voracious reader of 19th century novels.  For some reason, even though as a child I read mostly fiction, I first became a poet. Maybe it was something as simple as praise by a teacher in high school. I loved the way words could evoke and transform mood, and I always loved Emily Dickinson’s quirky poems.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I invent projects pretty quickly, but sometimes they are elaborate and last for a long time.  This last project for A DAY LIKE TODAY took three years to complete. I constantly revise and tinker and invent ways to interrupt and question my own facile thinking.

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?  
Often I begin projects in journals that culminate into a series of poems.  Sometimes there are ten poems.  Sometimes the work becomes a novel. Sometimes a collection of 100 poems (A Day Like Today). 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? 
I love giving readings. They inspire me to write and revise. 

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
At one point in my career as a poet I was very interested in Jacque Lacan, Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva. Why was I reading them?  I felt there was some secret that they knew about life and language. Of course, I am writing to understand my life/our lives, see more clearly or less clearly or just differently. My writing is experiential and my reading is part of my experience, so ideas and categories and the language of others segue into mine.  I was very taken at another time with writing by Mikhail Bahktin; I suppose that over the years, I have become more dialogic, sometimes allowing the many voices of consciousness to speak together. Also, I’m always hoping to learn something new about myself and the world I live in, through my poetic projects. 

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be? 
Various roles.  I don’t have a “should” about this. Maybe a slogan: “Do no harm.”

Maybe another slogan: “Be wise. Be wary. Be wild.”

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? 
I share my work with a couple of friends, but usually after the work is very close to being completed.  Is that essential?  No, but it can be helpful.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Once when I was in an art colony for the summer, a visual artist friend, Georgia Marsh, and I made a pact. We weren’t going to worry about our careers. Instead, we were simply going to live as long as we could and keep making our art.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I have written several collections of poetry and three novels; now I am working on another novel.  It has seemed natural to go from one to the other. I like story and I like language. Sometimes the material I am gathering starts to look like story and then it becomes a novel. Other times, a poem.  In the novel Thirty Miles to Rosebud, I took earlier poems, rewrote them as prose, and then worked them into the story.  

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?  
I work whenever I have time, intermittently everyday.  Usually when I am revising a work, I am also writing a new journal to work with later.   I tend to do a lot of my writing work in the evening.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? 
My writing only gets stalled if I don’t have enough time because I have to teach too much and my rent is too high.  There are unlimited possibilities for writing.  Someone asked me last week how I can be so productive. My answer was, I spend a lot of time alone.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home? 
The smell of cigarette smoke. I grew up with two parents smoking Pall Mall cigarettes.  That smell permeated everything.   Probably the reason I now see a pulmonologist.  Well, also the smell of Old Spice in the bathroom after my father went to work.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?   
I have been practicing yoga for about 20 some years. Over the years, I’ve also learned to also consider writing as another type of meditative practice, something I do to understand, express and create my life, and therefore, not dependent on “inspiration.”  There is a kind of clarity of vision that also comes from meditating and practicing asana.   That also influences my writing.  Everything in my environment (including nature, music, science, visual art, books) becomes part of my consciousness and thus part of my writing.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?  
It’s been quite wonderful to have communed and collaborated with so many poets and artists: Lewis Warsh has been very important in my life and work, as inspiration and a dear friend.  My visual artist friend and collaborator, Miranda Maher, the poets at St. Marks Poetry Project, the Belladonna women, my friends from POG in Tucson where I lived for four years, and so many others.  I’m very thankful for the writers on my shelf, on the sidewalk and in my address book.  It’s also great to have the internet and the minute-by-minute research possibilities.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Finish the novel I’m now writing.  Open my writerly shoulders into urdva dhanurasana.   Live into the future for as long as I can, as gracefully as possible with my lover, children, grandchildren and friends.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Maybe a musician.  I play the harmonica a little bit and I wish I could belt something out, but as of now, all I can play is “Summertime,” and even then I’m out of tune.  

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I have a mind that’s always working.   My youthful mind needed to find a language art form so I could slow it down, figure it out and revel in the nuances between the phrases and words.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Elena Ferrante is quickly becoming one of my favorite novelists, especially her Neapolitan Series (3 books), starting with My Brilliant Friend.  The narrator tells the story of her life, growing up in Naples, with her best friend, how they try to make sense of the violent oppressive life around them, the narrator managing to slip away (somewhat) with education, while her friend becomes tangled in her childhood.  The world gets wider and wider as the narrator becomes more aware.  It’s a gripping story of a girl/woman adapting to and banging against her feminine identity and location.  

The other contemporary author who I adore is Roberto Bolano.

Films – a month ago I saw Whiplash written and directed by Damien Chazelle.  It was horrifying and beautiful. One of the other films that stays in my mind from the last few years is Melancholia by Lars von Trier.  I can still see that planet spinning toward earth. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;