Those who know something of Barbara Henning’s life history through the reading of her other works, such as Ferne (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022) and Just Like That (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) will recognize she has followed an unusual trajectory. Coming from a working-class background and suffering an early blow in the death of her young mother, she ran away from home as a teenager, worked at various lowly jobs, including travelling around to county fairs to take pictures of people dressed up in antique clothing, then going to college, marrying and losing her husband through another early death. Raising her children for the most part alone, she pursued a writing career and became a professor and author of numerous works in prose and verse.
If she had decided to retell this story as a straight narrative, it would make an exciting book, but in her new Girlfriend (Hanging Loose Press, 2025), each prose poem is a snapshot of a different woman. Henning explains how each of these women have contributed to her life. A second remarkable feature of the book is how their friendships reflect the social currents of the time.
A key passage occurs when in her relationship with Kathy, a Detroit friend. Henning writes, “When I first met you, you were in med school, and you lived in a communal house two doors away from us. We had a dinner co-op on our block. Students, artists, writers, social activists. We were going to change things, live differently. “
This scene seems to have taken place in the early 1970s, a time of political tumult with the civil rights, and anti-Vietnam war movement in full swing, along with a rising demand for women’s rights. To give a little more background on this last moment, let me refer to Barbara Ryan’s Feminism and the Women’s Movement (Psychology Press, 1992). As she notes, in 1966 NOW (the National Organization for Women) was formed after progressive women’s ideas were rejected at a national conference on women. As NOW developed, there were splits over various issues, some thinking NOW wasn’t going deep enough in critiquing male dominance. Ryan writes, “As some activists were breaking away from NOW, women involved in a variety of other 1960s movements were questioning why women had not been included in the ideals of social justice that these movements espoused. Highlighting this omission was the contradiction between a liberatory ideology and the helper role women played in these groups.” A distinctive strand of these breakoff groups was that very often there was both an organizational and class differences from the mother group. In Feminism and the New Right (Praeger Publishers, 1983), as Pamela Johnson Conover and Virginia Gray point out, NOW had “a top-down structure … A survey of NOW members in 1974 showed that most were employed full-time, a plurality was in professional jobs, and most were highly educated.” In contrast, the countercultural group to which Henning belonged “was mass-based and had no national top-down organization.” It attracted more working-class membership.
This minimal evocation of the background of the creative ferment in women’s groups should indicate that Barbara and her friends’ desire to change things is in tune with the time’s progressive movements. Individual life projects, such as Kathy’s going to med school, are part of this direction.
Sociologist Hans Peter Dreitzel makes a relevant point about groups fighting for change. He suggests that those involved in breaking taboos and restrictions, such as (in the U.S. in the1970s) women becoming doctors or working-class women becoming professional writers, cannot do so unsupported and on their own. He states, “When people challenge the legitimacy of the powers which exploit them, such a redefinition of the situation can only be undertaken in solidarity with fellow partisans if one is not to run the risk of serious psychic disturbance. For reality definition and identity formation are formally interconnected and both are an intersubjective enterprise.” The argument is, if one is breaking new ground, to preserve one’s sanity, one must find spirited companions who share one’s progressive aspirations. Henning’s friendships take place most often with those who share her fighting spirit, maintaining their relationships in three ways.
Co-Creating
A good example of working together on creative projects is Henning’s friendship with Harryette Mullen, a California writer who she met at a poetry reading in New York. She remarks, “For some reason, you and I hit it off immediately.” This led to long phone conversations about one of Mullen’s books, discussions that eventually blossomed into print, “we turned our talk into a book.” Moreover, the book contained photos, which the pair gathered. She notes, “we cruised the city [of L.A.] photographing for the book – the Crenshaw neighborhood, Robert Graham’s sculpture garden at UCLA, Watts Tower.”
Looking a little further, one would find numerous examples of Henning’s collaborations, including with Martine Bellen, with whom she did a collaborative book of 14-line poems, Peep/Show, and her travels with Maureen Owen became Poets on the Road (City Points Press, 2023).
Mutual Aiding
Friendship often involves a helping hand, a reciprocal helping hand. Repeatedly, Henning recounts how she has been aided at crucial moments by intervening female friends just as she, in turn, stepped in when friends needed assistance. She mentioned in an email to me that it’s possible “women confide in each other and help each other maybe more easily than men do.” Henning notes many places where friends help friends. Henning accompanies Harriette to help another friend, Joni: “we both came to help her move, you with your van and me with our old car and trailer.” Later, when Henning is moving to New York and goes on ahead to look for an apartment, temporarily leaving her kids and husband behind in Detroit, her friend Anne is ready and willing to pitch in. “When I finally made the move to New York in my father’s old station wagon, you came along for the ride. Then you helped Allen take care of the children until he could make the trip.”
Other life-changing events such as illness or death are gone through side by side with supportive friends. She points to her friend Sally who helped her to deal with a separation, mentioning, “After Allen and I broke up, and I was feeling low, you came over and cleaned my apartment.” In such difficult times, Henning can be counted on. When Bernadette’s husband dies unexpectedly, Henning notes, “I flew to Detroit and helped you pack up his painting studio.”
With children, burden-sharing also demands the actions of friends. When Norma needs a hand, Henning is ready to offer it. “You had your second baby in the birthing center, and I came along to help take care of Jamie.”
Playing
Friends also make time to relax together. This is the territory of friendship Pushkin covered so eloquently in his early poems. In “To Classmates,” translated by Mary Hobson, he says when there is free time, he calls out, “All’s quiet, friends, it’s time to pass // an hour or two at leisure // out with the tablecloth and glass // Come, golden wine, our pleasure.”
Although Henning and friends may not pick up glasses of wine, they still find delightful ways to enjoy themselves, ones that have shifted dramatically over the years. When she was an adolescent, she spent time with Marlene. “We’d cruise the drive-ins in your red Mustang and go to parties together, searching for the boys we’d hook up with next.” With Janet, instead of the drive-in, they found, as she puts it, “Our favorite spot was the bowling alley. We drank coffee, ate French fries,” and had a roaring good time.
When she and her friends grow older, they find other diversions. This can be getting together to catch up as she does with her friend Deborah, recounting, “Today, a warm cloudy day in November, we sit outside Café Colour. You tell me news of your life, and I tell you mine.” Stories are even told in transit, when she is walking with Anele. “In the morning, I’d stand in the doorway of your building, waiting for you … Walking down 5th Avenue to Flatbush to Dekalb to LIU, we shared our worries about our children.” Talking, flirting and eating together, are all ways friends share downtimes when they are not busy with work, family or school.
You may recall that The Nicomachean Ethics devotes many pages to friendship. This is necessary since, in Aristotle’s view, each form of government, from Dictatorship to Democracy, fosters different forms of friendship. In tyranny, for example, there can be no real friendship since people concentrate on taking advantage of each other. I find Aristotle’s views persuasive. After all, could one have a friend in Nazi Germany when even your children might turn you into the authorities? Girlfriend goes against the grain here in presenting a set of interlocking friendships that span historical eras, both of progressive expansion and retreat. Henning’s friendships, so forcefully described in the book, cross both, kept alive by caring, enjoying and co-creating.
Girlfriend, by Barbara Henning. Brooklyn, New York: Hanging Loose Press, June 2025. 94 pages. $18.00, paper.
Jim Feast’s most recent book is Karl Marx, Private Eye (PM Press). His latest publication is a long essay on pianist Mathew Shipp and the relation of 1980s NYC free jazz to the squatting movement. It’s on the Jazz Right Now site.
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