New Poem ‘After We Lost the House’

Painted Bride Quarterly has published a new poem by Henry.

Henry Hughes
After We Lost the House

the deck I built, your mother’s plantings,

blossoms and birds carved 

into closet doors for the room 

you were gonna paint purple.  

It all went red on my half-time,

then Mom got sick and the car died.

 

Winter gnawed through that drafty trailer 

and the drunk-ruckus apartment on Ninth,

until I got the other job and this place, 

where you can walk to school 

and help Mom sow a small garden. 

 

The landlord doesn’t want a handyman, just a check 

every month.  But at night, in the garage 

over a makeshift bench, I build birdhouses—

top-grade plywood, stainless steel screws, 

tin-faced nesting holes

nothing’ll chew through.

• 0
• October 10, 2022

Rocky and Rose

A short story by Henry Hughes in Harvard Review.

“Rocky started his cannery shift at eight in the evening and finished at three in the morning, then went straight to the river, swinging big streamers with glow-in-the-dark heads, which some fly fishermen considered cheating. Those same men would start their mornings watching Rocky boot across the pasture carrying a couple of steelhead or a spring Chinook. He walked quickly to his truck, slowing down only if his heart raced…”

Keep reading

• 0
• September 12, 2020

Review of John N. Maclean’s “Home Waters” in Harvard Review

“John N. Maclean begins his memoir fly fishing on Montana’s Big Blackfoot River. Many years earlier, he had asked his father, Norman, why they no longer fished that stretch of river. His father had explained that it was because he didn’t know the new landowner, but the son also claims that his father ‘held many memories close, in a kind of time vault, to be reshaped and burnished without the nuisance of updates.'”

Read Henry’s review in the Harvard Review Online

• 0
• September 6, 2020

New Poems by Henry Hughes

The American Journal of Poetry has published two new poems by Henry.

Henry Hughes
Our Drinking
 
Exiled temptations,
a cool glass of outerspace, a movie
mobbed with friends. One more peach
from the waxy box of overripe.
 
We trip on egg shells
and swab our knees with gin,
caps spinning
until our talked-off heads
sag like diapers.
 
Noon cleanups, the missing acres
of last night, lights on, gate left open,
dog run off. Memory’s slash and wince,
thick woods and a stalled jeep.
 
Asleep on the backseat,
sweet child we never had.

Read Henry’s second poem in the journal.

• 0
• September 1, 2020

Review of Christopher Jane Corkery’s poems “Love Took The Words” in Harvard Review

“Thirty-five years after her lauded debut collection, Blessing, Christopher Jane Corkery’s superb second book, Love Took the Words, extends her commitment to musical, allusive, formally inventive poetry, which draws on religious and literary traditions as well as daily life.”

Read Henry’s review in the Harvard Review Online

• 0
• August 27, 2020

Review of Kathleen Graber’s new poems in “The River Twice”

“In this time rocked by pandemic and protests, Kathleen Graber offers poems that examine the nature of communion and communication. Troubled by divisive political rhetoric and the way language has been weaponized in the age of Trump, the speaker must nevertheless trust her own words—to tell us about mounting bills, a missing cat, divorce, sickness, and the loss of a loved one. Between the political and the personal, despair and hope, she finds salvation in the knowledge…”

Read Henry’s Review in the Harvard Review Online.

• 0
• August 25, 2020

Angler’s Journal Feature on Artist, Paul Gentry

Salmon Rising is one of a dozen images Gentry engraved and printed for two collections of angling literature that I edited for Knopf’s Everyman’s Library series. His work as a furniture maker, potter, photographer and painter have earned him local attention, and his wood engravings are national treasures. Several universities and institutions, including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and the Library of Congress, hold his artwork; Montana State University recently commissioned a set of prints for its famous Trout and Salmonid Collection.

Read Henry’s full article here in the Angler’s Journal

• 0
• August 27, 2019

Review of John Larison’s novel, “Whiskey When We’re Dry” in Harvard Review

“John Larison’s Whiskey When We’re Dry has all the classic elements of a Western saga: endlessly promising yet punishing land, tobacco and booze, corrupt lawmen and kindly prostitutes, good guys and bad guys with guns blazing. But it’s the particular story of our hero, Jesse, and her gender fluidity that makes this a truly excellent book.”

Read Henry’s review in the Harvard Review Online

• 0
• May 29, 2019

Review of Tracy Smith’s collection of poetry, “Wade in the Water” in Harvard Review

Tracy K. Smith’s fourth book of poetry ends with “An Old Story” of terrible times. Echoing Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” Smith bemoans a ravaged land and rising hate—the “worst in us having taken over / And broken the rest utterly down.”

Read Henry’s review in the Harvard Review Online

• 0
• April 11, 2019

Montana State University Library Trout & Salmonid Lecture 2019

Exploring literature, art, and popular culture, writer and professor Henry Hughes discusses the delightfully slippery world at the confluence of piscine and human existence
in his presentation, “The Sensual Fish,” delivered on April 2, 2019, at the Rialto in downtown Bozeman, Montana. Through fishing, Hughes crosses boundaries of race, ethnicity, gender, and class, making connections between the salty pleasures and tensions of human and fish life. According to events coordinator, Ann Vinciguerra, “Henry Hughes’ fascinating and humorous discussion delighted a full house at the Rialto.” Each year, the Montana State University Trout and Salmonid Lecture Series hosts a world-renowned speaker and offers a free lecture to the university and Bozeman communities.

• 0
• April 2, 2019