{"id":4718,"date":"2019-12-06T20:39:53","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T20:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=4718"},"modified":"2019-12-06T20:39:53","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T20:39:53","slug":"artifact","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/artifact\/","title":{"rendered":"Artifact"},"content":{"rendered":"

View from True North<\/em> by Sara Henning<\/strong><\/p>\n

Southern Illinois University Press, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paperback, 76 pages, $15.95<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In \u201cCamera Lucida,\u201d the second poem in Sara Henning\u2019s collection View From True North,<\/em> the speaker says, \u201cLet me be witness, Lord,\u201d and \u201cthe discreet \/\/ side of revelation still \/ calls me home.\u201d Those lines delineate both intent and subject matter here, for the book is a long and heartbreaking catalogue of the ways in which human beings can be cruel to one another.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Henning acknowledges that her grandfather\u2014her mother\u2019s father\u2014is the primary character in the book, and here is what we learn about him: he routinely physically and emotionally mistreated his children and wife; he routinely drank to excess, and was a mean drunk when he did so; he was a closeted homosexual, who kept a photographic and diary record of his many trysts, which his family discovered after he died; he infected his wife with an STD, then refused to admit it. Other poems center on the grandfather\u2019s slow death from dementia, Henning\u2019s father\u2019s suicide, and an attempt at same by her mother.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The grandfather appears in virtually every poem in the book, and the poems assume a variety of forms, from couplet poems to prose poems to sonnet-like sequences. Henning skillfully matches form with subject matter throughout the book; the almost-sonnet sequences\u2014extended meditations on the complicated relationship the speaker had with her grandfather and has with his memory\u2014 are among the most successful poems here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the salient features in View From True North<\/em> are the highly inflected diction and the sometimes-knotty syntax. In almost every poem we\u2019re reminded\u2014explicitly\u2014of the demons being dealt with. In \u201cHow I Learned I Had the Shine,\u201d it\u2019s \u201cmy grandfather\u2019s rage \/ when his martini lunch \/ cuts through modesty,\u201d and \u201cVermouth\u2019s nude \/ currency flits through \/ his glass now.\u201d In \u201cFor My Uncle, Who Learned to Fly,\u201d we\u2019re told of \u201cthe nights their father forced them \/ into the cellar, spurred him \/ onto his sister with joint locks \/ and vital point strikes.\u201d In \u201cSong,\u201d it\u2019s \u201cblue notes \/ The kind a father sings \/ while forcing his daughter\u2019s body \/ to the floor.\u201d \u201cBaptize Him in Dark Water\u201d gives us \u201cSesame chicken \/\/ exit-wounding from his mouth unswallowed.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In \u201cThrough a Glass Darkly,\u201d the speaker\u2019s mother, after the grandfather\u2019s death, finds a journal in which he chronicled his many homosexual assignations. For the speaker, the journal is an \u201cartifact\u201d:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>What she found\u2014Polaroids glued on back leaves. Naked men posed over<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>beds, their hard cocks stretched over bellies like sunning garter snakes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Barely legals standing akimbo, underwear cupping their scrotums. Entries<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>itemizing names, prices paid in U.S. dollars, dimensions of each organ limp and<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>aroused. The positions in which he fucked them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In \u201cBaptize Him in Dark Water,\u201d we encounter \u201cJags of heat-whelmed ice too sultry \/\/ not to thieve through the specular reflection \/ spiral into a raid of light.\u201d In \u201cConcordance for My Grandfather\u2019s Dementia,\u201d \u201cFox piss, tail feathers, a geography \/ of organs lashed into countries\u2014no \/ heuristic for this whole bruised longitude of animal.\u201d \u201cThe End of the Unified Field\u201d gives us \u201cI\u2019m ensnared by his stroboscopic \/ motion. I trace his dervishes through each illumination \/ angle-tangent plane. Surface normal. I watch him, \/ susurration in the sky\u2019s braille of snow.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is, of course, through conscious choice and artistic inclination about how to approach subject matter that poems are made. But when such charged diction and syntax are used to present already emotionally loaded subject matter the result is a lot of surface noise. Again, perhaps that is Henning\u2019s intent here; perhaps she feels that a more subdued approach would be insufficient to convey the impact of what is being described.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the cumulative effect is to risk compromising subtext. Just as it is possible to describe a fish or a sandpiper or autumn in language that not only describes the creature or object but also implies the speaker\u2019s connection to it, so it is possible to describe horrific human behavior and achieve the same result. In many places in Henning\u2019s book I can vividly see the bruises and the emotional harm the characters are experiencing. But I have a more difficult time understanding why I am being told about it, what the speaker of the poem desires me to take from it. Revulsion, pity, shock\u2014those are natural adjuncts to the stories we are being told. But a newspaper account can deliver that. On finishing a third reading of this book, I felt that I would not be picking it up again. I was sated, yet longing for a texture and substance that isn\u2019t quite there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is no doubt that Henning is a talented poet, one who is adept with form and is well practiced in the ways of making poems. This reader would hope that in future books she might find subject matter that lends itself to more subtlety, that offers more than cruelty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… a long and heartbreaking catalogue …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4723,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[6,1317,1318,1319,1320],"class_list":["post-4718","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-artifact","tag-russ-kesler","tag-sara-henning","tag-view-from-true-north"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nArtifact - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/artifact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Artifact - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"... a long and heartbreaking catalogue ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/artifact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2019\/12\/View-from-True-North-cover-detail.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"663\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"401\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/artifact\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/artifact\\\/\",\"name\":\"Artifact - 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