Review by Michael Sikkema (May 21, 2012):
"In SIR, the ideas of death and memory are inseparable. The body/not-body and who knows what when and how they know it are stitches that bind. To touch, to be bound..." Read the full review here.

Review by j/j hastain (March 13, 2012):
"HR Hegnauer’s Sir is a gorgeous, heart-breakingly honest tale (or non-tale?–“perhaps this is grief in its most idyllic form”) that feels (even after multiple reads and an experience of hearing the book recited) like a radical compassion-site–not the usual dyad compassion of one figure to another solely, somehow Sir’s compassion is compassion within a stratum of compassion. It loops in itself tenderly. It tends to and attends..." Read the full review here.

Author statement:
SIR is an attempt at thinking about what it means to be a human alongside another human, especially as we age. I've been writing through what a memory can be and how to preserve it; how to keep it, lose it, and try to retrieve it over time. This project wonders how to grieve the loss of memory at the same time as the loss of life, while trying to keep in mind that we are living right now. I am indebted to my grandparents who have inspired the characters of Sir & Mrs. Alice.

Excerpt from SIR:
I started this because I’m afraid of not remembering, and then Mrs. Alice thought that the giant evergreen across the street looked like, looked like, like something else that she couldn’t quite remember just then, and then she couldn’t quite remember what she was talking about anymore, and then she couldn’t remember that she was speaking a sentence, and so she just smiled at me, and I told her that I wish I knew how long 70 years was, and she said, you don’t want to know, and I said, but I do.

Bio:
HR Hegnauer is a freelance book and website designer who specializes in working with small presses and individual artists. HR received her MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University. Sir is her first chapbook.