Digigram by Barbara Henning

Abstract

Reviewed by: Digigram by Barbara Henning Kit Robinson (bio) digigram Barbara Henning United Artist Books https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780935992502/digigram.aspx 92 Pages; Print, $16.00 For a long time, the poet, novelist, and teacher Barbara Henning has made a career of violating genre boundaries, mixing fact and fiction, prose and poetry, autobiography and chance procedure to compile an utterly original body of work. Written in the pre-COVID teens during the hellish rise of Ubu Trump, her new book, Digigram, is an homage to public life, a celebration of the energy, movement, community, anonymity, and freedom afforded by our erstwhile urban existence. At the same time, through memory, dream, and reflection, Henning opens the door to her private world, a realm of love, joy, sorrow, and deep, if fraught, relationship. Digigram is a sequence of prose poems titled and dated from 25 February 2016 to 24 April 2018. Each entry is a verbal construct of phrases recording the events of one day through a series of flashes. Henning's use of the em dash to link the phrases frees her from the constraints of standard syntax and creates an equivalency across disparate referents—public and private, personal and political, past and present, dreaming and waking life. We join her on her bike, in cabs, on the subway, and in apartments and restaurants while she makes her way around the New York City of her continuous present, as well as the Detroit of her youth. Interspersed among her daily observations and encounters, news items appear like a running subtext injected into the flow. Trump, a looming, ominous presence throughout, is named only as "the bully." Strains of racism, oligarchy, and corruption interlace with verbal snapshots of quotidian events. As inner and outer worlds collide, feelings of anxiety, tenderness, and outrage animate the narrative. Two aspects of city life permeate the text: simultaneity and coincidence. One has the overwhelming sense of innumerable things going on at once. Street scenes commingle with states of mind in a kaleidoscopic mélange navigable [End Page 135] only by a quick-witted, intuitive narrator. Coincidence, a natural by-product of complexity, arrives early and often, as identical structures of feeling coincide: —an old female orangutan—locks eyes—with a young woman—breastfeeding a baby—yes, she nods, me, too–("Me, Too") Henning often uses words as hinges to swing from one realm of consciousness to the next and back again. In "Let Me Know," the narrative shifts from a bike ride by the shore of Lake Superior to immigration law to a soccer match to electoral politics. Each shift is triggered by the word or concept "pass": —as I pass the woman on the bike … many mothers are unable to pass on—their citizenship … when a pass is made—four defenders charge … a committee of American men—will meet to decide—the rights of women ("Let Me Know") The em dashes remind one of William Burroughs, but with an important difference: Henning's work is proudly feminist. The poems act as both argument and anthem: —the outlook for 2016 somewhat gloomy … a NYC policeman forces a man to stand—outside—in his underwear … another bully wants—to be liked by the alpha bully … ugly and frightful haters, bashers, hucksters—he-who-must-not-be-named … tear gas fired at children … 14,000 Syrian migrants—in desperate condition ("Wham!") "River God" begins with a description of the book's cover image, a 1984 photograph of the author's young children posing on the "belly of a river god," a statue at the Detroit Institute of Art, "looking over a baby angel—then over—the ruins of Detroit." The poem ends with "the boys reclining—beside my grown daughter—watching TV—feet overlapping." Past and present cohabit in Henning's kaleidoscopic prosody, which morphs and spreads in all directions, only to execute a poignant return: —at night—a cold-air bath—thunder—the sound of rain on the pavement—turn off the lights—lie in bed—in the dark—and [End Page 136] listen—my arms crossed—over my bare chest—the child I was—am now—Mama and Daddy—I say out loud—("A...