Today we're highlighting a recent video of poet Barbara Henning reading from her 2020 United Artists collection, Digigram. We're very glad to be able to present this recording, which was made and originally hosted in July 2021 by Don Yorty. Here's how he set up the video:
Barbara Henning’s new book of poems, Digigram, chronicles a dreary year, the abominable 2016, yet it is full of insights by an aware observer who takes the time to look. These poems are so good, they make the ordinary day to day extraordinary.
In the Vimeo below, at her home across from Prospect Park, Barbara settled down to read from Digigram. We were both doing other things and running around, but I’m glad we got it done because these poems offer optimism to the reader and listener; in the middle of creation is the will to go on. Enjoy.
Maureen Owen, who went on a rollicking poetry tour with Henning in the spring of 2019, hailed Digigram for "follow[ing] the path of Barbara Henning's daily orbit into the roar and stammer of the universe just outside her apartment door—the politics of the hour, the wandering populace, the upheavals and intervals of all the treasured ordinary." To her mind, Henning is "an engaged participant and insightful commentator," that "defines her times with riveting staccato observation and claims her place as part of that manifold citizenry." If those testimonials don't have you raring to listen to these poems, then I don't know what will! Click here to check out this new video, and all of the other remarkable recordings you'll find on PennSound's Barbara Henning author page.
