Fanny Howe (1940–2025)

Howe's novel is a splinter of fragments, bright glass letting light of philosophy and theology shine through the voice of Henny, a woman whose complexity and vulnerability sits with me even as I've closed the book and set it on the shelf. There is a density within Howe's prose and each paragraph feels on the verge of tipping over into a remarkable discovery.

Gone is a fumbling, grasping at the contours of the divine. I wish all theological journeys had such beauty and mysticism of the common.

Howe's writing always turns a screw loose in my brain and for that I'm forever grateful. There's such moments of frenetic beauty in this collection but if I'm being honest I had no idea what was happening in the poems most of the time.

A novel-in-verse (or almost) by one of the writers associated with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. And indeed, there's something poetic about this, but it is also a novel of suspense in the same time (as what we read is actually the notebook of the main character, who transcribes dialogues and digresses about various thing - she especially reports her "visions" of the Virgin Mary) - a mixture that, I think, one could hardly pull off with mainstream success now, long after the heydays of show more "postmodernism" (or the idea of it) -- but this was published in 1979. Too lazy right now to write more about this, but it is definitely an enjoyable AND innovative book (did I forgot to mention the "illustrations" that seem at first random, but prove to be part-and-parcel of the book?). show less