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View from True North
In these edgy poems of witness, Sara Henning’s speaker serves as both conduit and curator of the destructive legacies of alcoholism and multigenerational closeting. Considering the impact of addiction and sexual repression in the family and on its individual members, Henning explores with deft compassion the psychological ramifications of traumas across multiple generations.
With the starling as an unspoken trope for victims who later perpetuate the cycle of abuse, suffering and shame became forces dangerous enough to down airliners. The strands Henning weaves—violent relationships, the destructive effects of long-term closeting, and the pall that shame casts over entire lives—are hauntingly epiphanic. And yet these feverish lyric poems find a sharp beauty in their grieving, where Rolling Stone covers and hidden erotic photographs turn into talismans of regret and empathy. After the revelation that her deceased grandfather was a closeted homosexual “who lived two lives,” Henning considers the lasting effects of shame in regard to the silence, oppression, and erasure of sexual identity, issues that are of contemporary concern to the LGBTQIA community. Even through “the dark / earth encircling us,” Henning’s speaker wonders if there isn’t some way out of a place “where my body / is just another smoke-stung / dirge of survival,” if, in the end, love won’t be victorious.
Part eyewitness testimony, part autoethnography, this book of memory and history, constantly seeking and yearning, is full of poems “too brutal and strange to suffer / [their] way anywhere but home.”
With the starling as an unspoken trope for victims who later perpetuate the cycle of abuse, suffering and shame became forces dangerous enough to down airliners. The strands Henning weaves—violent relationships, the destructive effects of long-term closeting, and the pall that shame casts over entire lives—are hauntingly epiphanic. And yet these feverish lyric poems find a sharp beauty in their grieving, where Rolling Stone covers and hidden erotic photographs turn into talismans of regret and empathy. After the revelation that her deceased grandfather was a closeted homosexual “who lived two lives,” Henning considers the lasting effects of shame in regard to the silence, oppression, and erasure of sexual identity, issues that are of contemporary concern to the LGBTQIA community. Even through “the dark / earth encircling us,” Henning’s speaker wonders if there isn’t some way out of a place “where my body / is just another smoke-stung / dirge of survival,” if, in the end, love won’t be victorious.
Part eyewitness testimony, part autoethnography, this book of memory and history, constantly seeking and yearning, is full of poems “too brutal and strange to suffer / [their] way anywhere but home.”
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 23, 2018
19 people want to read
About the author
Sara Henning
11 books18 followersSara Henning is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America's George Bogin Memorial Award. She’s a recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 9, 2019
Wow. I loved this collection.
Henning's poems here are raw, primal. But written in a heady and intellectual way. There is fantastic wordplay here, so many layers of meaning.
They are poems in conversation with a long line of other poems, poems that are analytical and dense while remaining somehow accessible.
It's a fantastic book in my opinion, well worth the read.
Henning's poems here are raw, primal. But written in a heady and intellectual way. There is fantastic wordplay here, so many layers of meaning.
They are poems in conversation with a long line of other poems, poems that are analytical and dense while remaining somehow accessible.
It's a fantastic book in my opinion, well worth the read.
August 7, 2019
(Reading as part of the 2019 #SealeyChallenge) 6/31
Henning's poems are richly and intricately layered. I especially love the speculative nature of many of these poems, as well as the multifaceted formal aspects.
Henning's poems are richly and intricately layered. I especially love the speculative nature of many of these poems, as well as the multifaceted formal aspects.
November 15, 2019
Tonight I had the opportunity to hear Henning read from this collection, and it was incredible. Her poems are gutting and raw, yet her language is beautiful. I am in love with these poems, and I expect many readings of this book in the future.
January 28, 2020
Emotionally charged, this fearless and deft collection is one you must make part of your library.
January 29, 2020
A powerful depiction of family trauma, frequently reminding of me Sam Shepard's Buried Child. View from Truth North is a beautiful book, while at the same time a heart-wrenching. A must read.
March 26, 2022
Sara Henning's poetry is becoming known for its candidness and its emotional impact. In this award-winning collection, Henning explores the hidden issues that many families face and how they affect subsequent generations: abuse, substance abuse, closeting, mental illness, and more. The author pulls no punches in her writing, jarring the reader with its starkness...
"Did his own father enter his body like a bestial
burning? Was it white rush, dark webs
in a sudden blow? Rape is never this beautiful."
-"Fathers and Sons"
The central character in this collection is the author's grandfather. In the first half we see that he is a man of two extremes. On one side, he is a respected academic and pillar of the community. On the other side, he is a man of excessive rage and abuse, egged on by the alcoholism that leads to his physical and mental deterioration and his eventual demise. In the second half, Henning reveals the secret of his closeted life as the catalyst of his rage and abuse. With that revelation, he becomes less one-sided (or two-sided, as it were) and he becomes an object of repressed sadness and pity:
"I don’t want to ask him, why did you marry my grandmother? I don’t want to ask him, what did it take for you to put yourself inside of her?
Instead, I’m writing on the first blank page I can find, you should have loved who you wanted.
I’m writing, to save you would have meant the end of both of us."
-"Through A Glass Darkly"
"Did his own father enter his body like a bestial
burning? Was it white rush, dark webs
in a sudden blow? Rape is never this beautiful."
-"Fathers and Sons"
The central character in this collection is the author's grandfather. In the first half we see that he is a man of two extremes. On one side, he is a respected academic and pillar of the community. On the other side, he is a man of excessive rage and abuse, egged on by the alcoholism that leads to his physical and mental deterioration and his eventual demise. In the second half, Henning reveals the secret of his closeted life as the catalyst of his rage and abuse. With that revelation, he becomes less one-sided (or two-sided, as it were) and he becomes an object of repressed sadness and pity:
"I don’t want to ask him, why did you marry my grandmother? I don’t want to ask him, what did it take for you to put yourself inside of her?
Instead, I’m writing on the first blank page I can find, you should have loved who you wanted.
I’m writing, to save you would have meant the end of both of us."
-"Through A Glass Darkly"
Henning's writing is blunt yet subtle, powerful yet vulnerable, lyrical yet haunting. The reader will discover revelations that may mirror their own life... the stigma of substance, emotional, and physical abuse... a family legacy of toxicity... deeply buried secrets never revealed in polite company... the ravages of shame and self-hatred.
April 15, 2020
Sara Henning's second collection is a devastating consideration of her family, in particular her Grandfather's late-stage dementia, death, his legacy, and discovering a secret life he led. The language is beautiful and Henning uses various forms and approaches well. Recommended!
January 28, 2020
The violence and tragedy in Sarah Henning's masterful poetry collection View From True North is hereditary; it transforms bodies; it forces a new language. In her poem, "Song," Henning defines and re-defines the sounds of this trauma:
Can you hear it? / the song acutest at its vanishing? / Her father's heart?
~
Her body's brute arpeggio? / Is it a song of erasure gone wrong? / Do you call it
~
Bone of my bones / Flesh of my flesh / A fist-shaped longing chiseled out of light?
We are confronted, poem after achingly beautiful poem, with a legacy born from poverty, alcoholism, sexual assault, and suicide; but, Henning also pays homage to a legacy of poetry and its music. The collection, in which bodies are crushed into starlight, or transformed into birds, or burnt to ash, is anchored by the poet's vision-her words and her poetic lineage. View from True North is meant to be read and savored.
Can you hear it? / the song acutest at its vanishing? / Her father's heart?
~
Her body's brute arpeggio? / Is it a song of erasure gone wrong? / Do you call it
~
Bone of my bones / Flesh of my flesh / A fist-shaped longing chiseled out of light?
We are confronted, poem after achingly beautiful poem, with a legacy born from poverty, alcoholism, sexual assault, and suicide; but, Henning also pays homage to a legacy of poetry and its music. The collection, in which bodies are crushed into starlight, or transformed into birds, or burnt to ash, is anchored by the poet's vision-her words and her poetic lineage. View from True North is meant to be read and savored.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews