On Long News: In the Short Century
January 28, 2025
Lisa Rogal Interview’s Barbara Henning on Long News: In the Short Century
Lisa: You founded the original Long News in 1990—and wasn’t Lewis Warsh also involved? You were teaching at Long Island University, raising two kids, and working on your own poetry. Your life must have been very busy. What about this moment in your life inspired you to start a poetry magazine?
Barbara: You have two children so you know what that is like. Around that time, though, my children were teenagers. I ‘d just gone through a stressful tenure review experience at LIU, and I was becoming more and more disenchanted by the academic power grabs. I didn’t want that way of interacting as part of my life. Even though I was a single parent and teaching full time, I was determined to also be a full time poet. I remember going to Lewis’s cubical and telling him I was going to start a magazine. Lewis was very encouraging. He already had a lot of experience publishing magazines. We shared ideas and throughout the five issues, he was always involved. Between classes, we would meet in our cubicles and make plans and lists of people to invite, and we’d read and talk about the submissions. I wanted to have contributing editors, and Lewis became the first. Also, I wanted to have a strong Detroit connection (I grew up in Detroit), so I invited Chris Tysh (she was also close with Lewis) and Tyrone Williams to be contributing poetry editors. I also invited Don David, a Canadian poet, philosopher and friend who was living in NYC at the time. A community was forming. And in later issues, other poets contributed, but Chris, Tyrone, Lewis, and Don were involved throughout. My ex-husband and friend, Allen Saperstein owned a copy center in Brooklyn, and he printed the first issue. This helped a lot with envisioning the magazine since none of us had money to invest, and it was costly to print a perfect bound journal. Later we received a few grants.
Lisa: I like what you are saying about a community forming. This was a really important philosophy in the MFA program at LIU, stemming from Lewis, and you as well. Besides learning about the history of poetry, we were also learning how to find and build a poetry community. Can you talk a little bit more about the community-building aspect of publishing a poetry magazine?
Barbara: When you are making a magazine and inviting others to participate, you are participating in the making of poetic culture. Together with others you are making the poems, the book, the website and the culture that we poets share. The poets are not just writing poems to be sent out to a magazine that has no aesthetic connection with them. It can be exciting making a magazine and running events. Even though I don’t know all the relationships and projects that took place as a result of the five issues/four years we spent publishing Long News, I’m sure there were many.
Lisa: Visual art was an important aspect of the magazine, with Sally Young (whose work is featured in our first issue) coming on as an art editor for issue 1 of the original magazine, and later Miranda Maher. Why was including visual art important? How did Sally and Miranda get involved?
Barbara: I had lived for many years in the Cass Corridor in Detroit among a community of artists and writers. Because of my past, it was logical to combine visual arts with writing. Sally and I were and are close friends. In Detroit, we both had small children and we had both been involved in a cooperative nursery. Sally moved to NYC a year or so before I did. I remember we were talking about a possible magazine even before I started it. Miranda had been living in Detroit for a few years, and Chris suggested that she contact me to help work on the magazine. In later issues, Miranda brought in a few other contributing art editors. I remember touring the galleries in the city with her and learning a lot about conceptual art. I was very excited when she invited Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager and Sophe Calle for Issue 3.
Lisa: When we first started talking about making a new Long News, you encouraged Tony and me to include our own work alongside the poets we had invited. You said you did this in the original Long News—all the editors were included in almost all five issues. Some magazines do not include work by the editors. Why did you decide to do this and encourage Tony and me to do the same?
Barbara: The editors and the writers are part of a community, rather than a hierarchy of the ones who decide staying in the background. At first when starting the magazine, I was also hesitant to put my own poems in the magazine, but Lewis insisted. I like what Diane di Prima said to Naropa students in 1997 (“By Any Means”): “It's really important to think about just using whatever you've got, whatever comes to hand, to get your work out. You know? And to get work out to me is one of the most important things—to get it into circulation once you've written it.” That’s exactly what we had in mind. You’re a poet so you write all the time. It’s your life work and you get it into the world. Diana di Prima, by the way, was one of the first poets we invited to contribute to the magazine.
Lisa: It sounds like there was a desire to create community, as well as to make your own contribution by getting work out (letting it go, even). Would you say there was an overall philosophy of the magazine?
Barbara: In the very beginning, we didn’t articulate a philosophy. Instead, the magazine evolved out of our shared politics and poetics. We were all against war and oppression, for freedom against state and corporate control of our bodies, our language. We were pushing poetic borders and experimenting with form and language. I think as you and Tony continue with the magazine, your poetics will be revealed. You are already part of a community of poets. Even if we have differences, most of the poets we know are against violence, war and oppression. We start there, resisting with compassion for our own lives and struggles, as well as for others. We tell the truth as best we know it, and speak out, quietly, loudly, metaphorically. I’d wager that many of the writers and artists published in the original Long News felt that their work in some way was helping to transform our world and society to be more egalitarian with less violence. I remember thinking (and I still do): If you change language, you change culture. If you change yourself and the way you think, the way you talk, you send energetic vibes out into the greater conversation. We felt change was possible and we were working on it with the magazine and our writing.
Lisa: Speaking of the impact of language and how you use it, I am curious about the title of the magazine. How did you come up with “long news"? Where does it come from and what does it mean?
Barbara: In a letter to me, Tyrone proposed the name and explained that Maya Angelou had referred to “long news” in one of her novels and Tyrone said that it “refers to news that affects the distant future.” So we were thinking about the power of poetry to change the way we live even though we might not see it immediately. We were accustomed to thinking about poetry as a kind of news. I really like this passage by Diane in the same talk:
“You know, Pound said that poetry is news that stays news. But what makes something news keeps changing. Sometimes poetry is news because we're breaking down the syntax or playing with the language. Sometimes it's news because we’re extending the content of what can be said in a poem. Sometimes it's news because we just reinvented the line or we've uninvented the line and we’re only going to write prose poems for the rest of our lives. Sometimes there's a philosophical point of view behind a whole bunch of work. Those are all kinds of news, but what makes any of it stay news is that level of enthusiasm and energy in the intent.”
In the first few issues, Michael Pelias—a philosopher and friend who had contributed to the magazine—suggested adding “in the short century” as the subtitle. Some say the 20th century didn’t start until WW1 changed everything and then it ended when the Soviet Union broke up in the early ‘90s; therefore a short century. Our magazine reflected and commented on what was happening in the world in our time. Besides entering a new pro-world-Capitalist century, we also were working with new digital technologies. It now looks like the 21st century may be called a long world-wide digital capitalist century.
Lisa: Something that Lewis always said was that poetry is a gift economy. Poetry is outside the capitalist economy, something you give and get freely. That is a very meaningful reason for me to put work out there—mine and others. It feels especially important right now. And it is a joyful process. Working with you and Tony: meeting up, planning, talking about poems, has been such a pleasure. I’m wondering, what did you enjoy most about working on the original Long News?
Barbara: Working on a project together with others can deepen friendships. And that’s what happened with many of us. It’s gatherings like this that seem to be disappearing from our daily life. Even café life has changed dramatically. Everyone at their own table with their computers and phones. No interaction. It was a lot of work setting up a print magazine and getting it to distributors and libraries. I remember we met frequently in my apartment on 9th Street—the laundry hanging in the hallway, the children in and out. We didn’t get paid for that work. It was a shared passion.
Lisa: What made you want to reincarnate it with us? We could have started a new magazine entirely (something we talked about early on).
Barbara: First of all, it’s a cool title for a literary journal, Long News. Why should it be back in the archives. You were both students in MFA courses I taught at LIU. How many years ago was that? 2010 or 11? I thought it would be great for you to publish a magazine. Why not connect to some project that both Lewis and I had worked on? I’m sure you’ll remake it in a way that reflects your interest in the present and future. Now you are starting off with a focus on poetry and with some visual art, but who knows where you’ll go with it. Another reason I came up with the idea was because I had been meeting with both of you individually now and again for lunch; and I enjoyed the months we spent with our reading group—studying HD and Lorine Niedecker. When that stopped, I wanted to keep contact, and that’s when I started thinking about you two and Long News.
Lisa: Those reading group meetups were lovely. I was really happy that you wanted to keep working with us, and this project feels meaningful in many ways—the connection to Lewis, Tyrone, and other poets (some of whom are in this first issue of the new Long News). I like that we have this thread to the past, but also we’re going forward in a new direction.
Lisa Rogal is a poet and teacher living in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of la belle indifference (Cuneiform Press), Feed Me Weird Things (Ugly Duckling Presse), Morning Ritual (United Artists Books), and The New Realities (Third Floor Apartment Press). She co-edits Long News Poetry & Poetics.
Barbara Henning is a poet, novelist, editor and a writer of poetic prose with five novels and eight collections of poetry. Recent books include Ferne, a Detroit Story (Library of Michigan Notable Book Award); a poetry collection, Digigram (United Artist Books); Poets on the Road (City Point Press, with Maureen Owen); and Girlfriend (forthcoming, from Hanging Loose Press). Born in Detroit, she has lived in New York since 1984, with interim years in Tucson and Mysore India. She has taught at the Poet’s House, the Poetry Project, Naropa University, Long Island University and for Writers.com. For more detail, see www.barbarahenning.com