Cities and Memory

by Barbara Henning

Poetry. "Barbara Henning's new book brings together several years of her atonal musings on autobiography, place and longing. Lyrical bursts punctuate the narrator's otherwise seamless restlessness--Detroit, New York, Tucson, and India. The following Escheresque lines from one of Henning's narrators could well have been spoken by Nella Larsen's Helga 'Why am I here, I think, when I could be there? Because if I were there, I'd be thinking why am I here when I could be there.' As lopsided as a grin on the edge of a nervous grimace ('sex is an ever available age old temporary cure for sadness'), CITIES AND MEMORY is a disjunctive incarnation of a simple, profound 'Don't forget me, he said.' And Henning doesn't"--Tyrone Williams.

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2010

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.