Susan Howe

Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives
(Poetry, meditation, art book. Defies genre!)
Susan Howe
Christine Burgin / New Directions: 2014

Reviewed 2.4.15

This is the only book I have ever purchased with its cellophane wrapper untouched. I am one of the nasty sort of people who insists on seeing inside the book and thus will, even when the book is quite expensive -- for me anything over $35, unwrap the thing without permission to see its contents because I want to know what I am show more getting. Why books are wrapped up with such cellophane in the first place seems to me ridiculous. But this time I didn't. The weave and beauty of the linen-like blue binding and the picture of a wooden box precariously perched on a black curtained wooden stool on its cover, the mysterious title and the poet's name in simple block white letters all made me intuitively know that the inside of this book bore treasure. Absolute treasure. I purchased it. Yesterday I opened it and I was not disappointed. Last night I lay in bed reading the first few pages, fragmentary mediations, scraps of texts from long ago, biddings of words that writers, poets, preachers scratched in margins or wrote out lovingly in scrolly hand or even partially destroyed, these along side poetic prose meditations and descriptions by Howe and occasional poems. This morning I read all the way through it. I will reread it now for the next seven mornings minimum.

The work came about through Howe's search of archival libraries. She includes text fragments from numerous sources and archives, including, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Jonathan Edwards, Hanna Edwards Wetmore, Henry James, Noah Webster, Hart Crane, Samuel Johnson, and Mary Temple. Most intact poems are from William Carolos Williams.

Howe quoting William Carlos Williams' Paterson: "Rigor of beauty is the quest."

This is Susan Howe's quest for beauty, the flowing of words from all sources, the interruptions, tears, rips, the stitching, "stiching," and weaving of texts, the pulling together of threads from past and present for posterity. This is a true patchwork quilt of words, texts, poems, photos of text fragments, prose meditations, and mini translations. This could also be called a fragment diary from the record of a woman who is questing after the ephemeral nature of poetic minds and for the connections we make across all boundaries, time, distance, and language.

As Emily Dickinson would say, I feel as if the top of my head were blown off. Now this is poetry!

For all poets and poetry lovers: A MUST read! show less

Howe's short book is an illuminating take on one of my favorite poets, focusing in particular on a careful reading of "My Life Stood---a Loaded Gun." Howe does an excellent job of showing the poetic and other influences on Dickinson, especially the Brownings, Shakespeare (King Lear in particular), Fenimore Cooper, and Jonathan Edwards. Sometimes, Howe lets her own poetic rhetoric carry her away into near intelligibility, but I simply take that as her excitement and appreciation for what show more Dickinson was able to do. If you appreciate Dickinson, give this a read. If you are not sure, definitely read this work of one poet reading another. show less

This book has three sections, each remarkably different from one another, and yet connected by a recognizable poetic voice and interest. The first, "The Disappearance Approach" is about the unexpected death of her second husband. Add this to my saddest-reading-list-ever; it fits alongside Didion's The Year Of Magical Thinking and Gomez's Say Her Name. But these shortish prose-blocks are distinctly poetry, where the others are memoir. Of course, the lines are not quite so clear-cut between show more the two, but her frequent moves into the lyric, the shifts into non-normative syntax, and the recurring failures of language on the page to continue on are all gestures that belong more fully to poetry. The end of the first prose-block, for example:

He was lying in bed with his eyes closed. I knew when I saw him with the CPAP mask over his mouth and nose and heard the whooshing sound of air blowing air that he wasn't asleep. No.
Starting from nothing with nothing when everything else has been said

The description begins normatively enough. Then that "No." with its doubling function: affirming her knowledge and simultaneously rejecting it. And then the total shift into lyric, a statement that merely fades rather than ending, a kind of hopelessness in expression, the collapse of logic, the inability to express. No being the only possible utterance. That form shapes the rest of the section: straightforward, surprisingly unsentimental descriptions and memories, followed by a brief lyric diversion.

The second section is extremely different, cut-up collages of type. What's fascinating for me is how the mind always tries to create meaning, to render legible. These collages are for the most part un-readable, except in parts, and still there's an impulse to read slowly, to extrapolate from the fragments to create words, sentences, context. They're beautiful as objects and fascinating as textual remnants.

The final section is composed of sparse, almost hymnal poetry blocks. This was the least engaging for me, but that's because I'm less interested in the Christian metaphysical mysticism and more in the quality of language. The shift back into legibility is welcome, though, after the difficulty of the middle section.

I'm so glad I finally made the time to read this. Inspiring, as always.

[Posted originally at: http://alluringlyshort.com/2013/10/13/that-this-by-susan-howe/ ] show less

Since Susan Howe came to read last week, I’ve been thinking that I really must immediately read everything she’s ever written starting now go. Before hearing her read I’d read her major works: The Europe of Trusts (which I’m planning on re-reading because it was almost a decade ago I read it); My Emily Dickinson. Recently, you’ll remember perhaps, I read That This. So I went to my local friendly university library and got every book they had of hers. Which it turns out was only show more Singularities. So while I’m waiting for the others to come in through interlibrary loan, I devoured this book.

A very slim volume in three sections. Triptych, again. Challenging, as most of her work is, but rewarding. I find myself having to really slow down, read and re-read passages, engage them with different minds. My listening mind, my tactile mind, my unfocused mind, my graphic mind. One of the things I love most about this book is that the first two sections have an introduction talking about the intent, and a little bit of the process, of the following work. The prose is far from explanatory, though, it feels like the necessary entry-point. “You have to know this in order to begin.” I love that apparatus included unobtrusively. It’s not an explication, not an explanation, but a positioning. You are here, in relation to the poem. Now go there. Not directions but a map.

[Read the whole thing: http://alluringlyshort.com/2014/02/05/singularities-by-susan-howe/ ] show less