Passion of Signs

by Barbara Henning

A beautifully evocative collection of lyrical insights on love, and the social and historical framework in which it struggles to happen. These precise, well-wrought poems understand that formal innovation is never more than a function of insight--these are the sort of poems that could only arise from a life intensely felt and understood. Henning knows a great deal about the negotiations that make love possible, or make it fail, and she knows that the most evocative poetry is often that which lives closest to our own particularities. (Mark Wallace. Taproot Reviews #7/8, 1996).

10 pages, chapbook, Cover Artist: Georgia Marsh

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

BARBARA HENNING is a poet and fiction writer, author of four novels and several books of poetry. Her latest novel is Just Like That (Spuyten Duyvil 2018) and a book of poems A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press 2015. Other not so recent books include A Swift Passage (Quale Press 2013), a novel, Thirty Miles to Rosebud (BlazeVOX Books 2009), a collection of poems My Autobiography (2007 United Artists). Two novels, You Me and the Insects (2005) and Black Lace (2001) both published by Spuyten Duyvil . Other works include a series of photo-poem pamphlets; Detective Sentences (Spuyten Duyvil, 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, including Poetry International, the Paris Review, Fiction International, The Brooklyn Rail, The World, Talisman, Lingo, Shiny, Not Enough Night, Hanging Loose and others. During the early nineties, she was the editor of Long News in the Short Century, a journal of art and writing. She was born in Detroit, relocated to New York City in the early eighties. She is presently teaching for Long Island University where she is Professor Emerita, as well as for writers.com.