A Day Like Today

“Reading Barbara Henning's poems is always completely refreshing. Perhaps it has to do with that "swerve" between the bumpy pavement under the bicycle wheel and the ring of radiation around the Earth, from the political to the completely mundane. I get caught up in the poem's movement. So deft, so seemingly easy, with an almost folk-art clarity in the weaving, these poems nonetheless make things really weird—I don't get it!—and suddenly I'm in the world, "to be here right now"—how did I get here?” – Matvei Yankelvich

Born in Detroit in 1948, Barbara Henning has lived in New York City since 1983. She is the author of ten books of poetry, A SWIFT PASSAGE (Quale Press, 2013), Cities and Memory; MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY (United Artists, 2007), A Slow Curve, Detective Sentences, IN BETWEEN (Spectacular Diseases, 2000), ME & MY DOG (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 1999), LOVE MAKES THINKING DARK (United Artists Books, 1995), The Passion of Signs, and SMOKING IN THE TWILIGHT BAR (United Artists Books, 1988); three novels, THIRTY MILES TO ROSEBUD (BlazeVOX Books, 2009), YOU, ME, AND THE INSECTS (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005), and Black Lace; and numerous limited edition artist pamphlets, combining photography and writing. She is also the author of a book of interviews, LOOKING UP HARRYETTE MULLEN (Belladonna*, 2011) and the editor of The Selected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins. She teaches at Long Island University in Brooklyn, where she is Professor Emerita.