Description
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. African American Studies. Introduction by Juliana Spahr. Six years after Harryette Mullen and Barbara Henning first met at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café, Henning proposed she do a postcard-format interview of Mullen that would allow for a "very small postcard space in which to respond...[t]he idea of cards flying through the mail & overlapping." Thus began what is now LOOKING UP HARRYETTE MULLEN, unique collaborative conversations that offer a candid look at the influences, politics, and poetics that inform Mullen's poetry. The conversation expands even further in the second set of spoken interviews that include concerns as far-ranging as the Heaven's Gate cult, Oulipian constraints such as S + 7 and lipograms, syllabic rhymes, and Aimé Césaire. In stunning detail, Mullen and Henning discuss the origins of each poem in Mullen's highly acclaimed collection Sleeping with the Dictionary. For poets and readers of poetry interested in witnessing how a brilliant, singular writer embarks on the journey of generating work to scholars researching the inception of Mullen's poems, this book informs by way of technique and vitality.
Author Bio
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.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA