Susan Howe (born June 10, 1937) is anAmericanpoet,scholar,essayist, andcritic, who has been closely associated with theLanguage poets, among other poetry movements.[1] Her work is often classified asPostmodern because it expands traditional notions of genre (fiction,essay,prose andpoetry). Many of Howe's books are layered with historical, mythical, and other references, often presented in an unorthodox format. Her work contains lyrical echoes of sound, and yet is not pinned down by a consistentmetrical pattern or a conventionalpoetic rhyme scheme.[2][3]
Howe was born on June 10, 1937, inBoston, Massachusetts.[4] She grew up in nearbyCambridge. Her mother,Mary Manning, was an Irish playwright and acted for Dublin'sGate Theatre.[5] Manning was a close friend ofSamuel Beckett, with whom she had a brief affair a year before Susan was born; this led to a rumour that Beckett might be her biological father, although Susan Howe has stated that DNA tests show Beckett was not her father.[6] Her father, Mark De Wolfe Howe, was a professor at Harvard Law School and became the official biographer of Supreme Court JusticeOliver Wendell Holmes. Her auntHelen Howe was amonologuist andnovelist.[7] Howe has two younger sisters,Fanny Howe, who is also a poet; and Helen Howe Braider. Howe graduated from theBoston Museum School of Fine Arts in 1961.[1]
Howe married painterHarvey Quaytman in 1961; they had met at the art school. They separated when their daughter was young. Howe and her daughter lived withsculptorDavid von Schlegell for several years before the couple married. They were together until his death in 1992. The widowed poet married again, toPeter Hewitt Hare, aphilosopher and professor at theUniversity of Buffalo. He died in January 2008.
Howe is an author of a number of books of poetry, includingEurope of Trusts: Selected Poems (1990),Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974−1979 (1996) andThe Midnight (2003),Pierce-Arrow (1999),Bed Hangings withSusan Bee (2001),Souls of the Labadie Track, (2007)Frolic Architecture, (2010), "Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives" (2014) andThat This (2010), and three books of criticism,The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (1993), "The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems" (2013) andMy Emily Dickinson (1985). Howe began publishing poetry withHinge Picture in 1974 and was initially received as a part of the amorphous grouping of experimental writers known as the language poets-writers such asCharles Bernstein,Bruce Andrews,Lyn Hejinian,Carla Harryman,Barrett Watten, andRon Silliman.[9] Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, includingThe Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry anthologyIn the American Tree, andThe Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry.[10]
In 2003, Howe started collaborating with experimental musicianDavid Grubbs.[11] The results were released on five CD's:Thiefth (featuring the poemsThorow andMelville's Marginalia),Songs of the Labadie Tract,Frolic Architecture,Woodslippercounterclatter, andConcordance.
Back, Rachel Tzvia.Led By Language: The Poetry and Poetics of Susan Howe. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2002.
Collis, Stephen.Through Words of Others: Susan Howe and Anarcho-Scholasticism. Victoria, BC: English Literary Studies Editions, 2006.
Crown, Kathleen. "Documentary Memory and Textual Agency: H.D. and Susan Howe."How2, v. 1, n° 3, Feb. 2000.
Daly, Lew.Swallowing the Scroll: Late in a Prophetic Tradition with the Poetry of Susan Howe and John Taggart. Buffalo, NY: M Press, 1999.
Davidson, Michael. "Palimptexts: Postmodern Poetry and the Material Text",Postmodern Genres. Marjorie Perloff, ed. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988/89. (Coll.: n° 5 of Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory.) pp. 75–95.
"The Difficulties Interview", issue dedicated to Susan Howe.The Difficulties, 3.2, 1989. pp. 17–27.
Duplessis, Rachel Blau. "Our law /vocables /of shape or sound: The work of Susan Howe",How(ever) v.1 n° 4, May 1984.
Foster, Ed. "An Interview with Susan Howe",Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, n° 4: special issue on Susan Howe, 1990. pp. 14–38.
Howard, W. Scott. "Literal/Littoral Crossings: Re-Articulating Hope Atherton’s Story After Susan Howe’s Articulation of Sound Forms in Time."Water: Resources and Discourses. Ed. Justin Scott Coe and W. Scott Howard.Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 6.3 (2006):[1].
Howard, W. Scott. “Teaching, How/e?: not per se.”Denver Quarterly 35.2 (2000): 81–93.
Howard, W. Scott. “‘writing ghost writing’: A Discursive Poetics of History; or, Howe's hau in ‘a bibliography of the king’s book; or, eikon basilike’.”Talisman 14 (1995): 108-30.
Joyce, Elisabeth."The Small Space of a Pause": Susan Howe's Poetry and the Spaces Between. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2010.
Keller, Lynn.Forms of Expansion: Recent Long Poems by Women. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Ma, Ming-Qian. "Articulating the Inarticulate: Singularities and the Countermethod in Susan Howe,"Contemporary Literature v.36 n° 3, 1995, pp. 466–489.
Montgomery, Will.The Poetry of Susan Howe: History, Theology, Authority. New York, NY: Palgrave, 2010.
Naylor, Paul.Poetic Investigations: Singing the Holes In History. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999.
Nicholls, Peter. "Unsettling the Wilderness: Susan Howe and American History",Contemporary Literature, v.37, n° 4, 1996, pp. 586–601.
Perloff, Marjorie. "Against Transparency : From the Radiant Cluster to the Word as Such" & "How it Means: Making Poetic Sense in Media Society" inRadical Artifice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Perloff, Marjorie. "Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject: Ron Silliman'sAlbany, Susan Howe'sBuffalo",Critical Inquiry, n° 25, Spring 1999, pp 405–434.
Perloff, Marjorie.Poetic License: Essays on Modernist and Postmodernist Lyric. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1990.
Quartermain, Peter.Disjunctive Poetics: From Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukovsky to Susan Howe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Rankine, Claudia, and Spahr, Juliana.American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language. Middletown, CT:Wesleyan University Press, 2002.
Reinfeld, Linda M.Language Poetry: Writing as Rescue. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
Swensen, Cole. "Against the Limits of Language: The Geometries of Anne-Marie Albiach and Susan Howe", inMoving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing By Women, Mary Margaret Sloan, ed. Jersey City, NJ: Talisman House Publishers, 1998. pp. 630–641
Ziarek, Krzysztof.The Historicity of Experience: Modernity, the Avant-Garde, and the Event. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001.
Jon THOMPSON's “Interview with Susan Howe” fromFree Verse: A journal of contemporary poetry and poetics, 2005. at:[2]Archived 2017-10-04 at theWayback Machine
Susan SCHULTZ's « Exaggerated History. »Postmodern Culture. v. 4, n° 2, Jan. 1994. online at: [www.english.upenn.edu]
Cole SWENSEN's « To Writewithize (as in "to hybridize" to "harmonize" to "ionize" etc.)»American Letters & Commentary, Winter 2001. at:[3]
Cole SWENSEN's « Seeing reading: Susan Howe's Moving Margins. » Conference: Louisville Conference on Modern Literature. April 1999. at:[4]
Brian MCHALE's « HER William Shakespeare: On the interventionist poetics of Susan Howe (in the male literary canon) » Conference on contemporary poetry: Poetry and the Public Sphere. Rutger's University, April 24–27, 1997. at:[5][permanent dead link]
METCALF Paul. "Untitled: on Hope Atherton's Wandernings." on Modern American Poetry Website:[6]Archived 2008-07-05 at theWayback Machine
INTERVIEW in FRENCH with Omar BERRADA. « the space between: Poésie, cinéma, histoire. Entretien avec Susan Howe. » publié dansVacarme, n° 32, été 2005. Disponible sur :[7]
Susan Howe Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
