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Fanny Howe

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Fanny Howe
BornFanny Quincy Howe
(1940-10-15)October 15, 1940(age 84)
Buffalo, New York,U.S.
Occupation
  • Poet
  • novelist
  • short story writer
Notable awards2005 Griffin Poetry Prize, 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Children3 (includingDanzy Senna)
RelativesMary Manning,Susan Howe,andR.H. Quaytman
Fanny Howe in Speaking Portraits

Fanny Howe(born October 15, 1940 inBuffalo, New York) is an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[1][2]Howe has written more than 20 books of poetry and prose.[3]Her major works include poetry such asOne Crossed Out,Gone,andSecond Childhood;the novelsNod,The Deep North,andIndivisible;and collected essays such asThe Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and LifeandThe Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation.[3]

Howe has received praise and official recognition: she was awarded the 2009Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize[4]by thePoetry Foundation.She also received the Gold Medal for Poetry from theCommonwealth Club of California[5]In addition, herSelected Poemsreceived the 2001Lenore Marshall Poetry Prizefrom theAcademy of American Poetsforthe Most Outstanding Book of Poetry Published in 2000. She was a finalist for the 2015International Booker Prize[6]She has also received awards from theNational Endowment for the Arts,theNational Poetry Foundation,theCalifornia Arts Council,and theVillage Voice.She isprofessor emeritaof Writing and Literature at theUniversity of California, San Diego.She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Early life, education and marriage

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Howe was born in Buffalo, New York. Her father Mark De Wolfe Howe was then teaching at the state university law school. When her fatherMark De Wolfe Howeleft to join the fighting in World War II, her mother, Irish playwrightMary Manning,took Howe and her older sisterSusan HowetoCambridge, Massachusetts.(Their younger sister Helen was born after their father's return from the war.) There the family lived through the children's childhoods.[7]

Her father became a colonel and served in Sicily and North Africa. After the war he went toPotsdamas a legal adviser in the Allies' reorganization of Europe.[8]Returning to peacetime, her father continued his work as a lawyer and became a professor atHarvard Law School.

Howe's mother was an actress at theAbbey Theatreof Dublin for some time, before coming to the United States in 1935. She also wrote several plays to be performed there and at the Gate Theatre.[8]Her maternal aunt wasHelen Howe,a monologuist and novelist. Her sisters areSusan Howe,who also became a notable poet, and Helen Howe.

Later recalling her early ambitions to be a poet, Fanny Howe attendedStanford Universityfor three years. She was briefly attracted by the political activism, and communism. In 1961—the year she left Stanford—she married Frederick Delafield. They had no children and divorced two years later.[9]

As aCivil Rightsactivistin the 1970s, she met and married fellow activist Carl Senna. They also shared the literary world. Of African American-Mexican descent, he is also a poet and was one of the youngest editors of a notable journal.

They had three children in four years. Their middle child,Danzy Senna,became a novelist and essayist. She draws from her biracial family and her experience, exploring issues of race and class in the US. Howe and Senna separated when the children were young, and had a bitter divorce.

Writing career

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Howe is one of the most widely read of Americanexperimental poets.Her writing career began during the 1960s with twopaperback original'pulp' novels, published under thepseudonymDella Field.[8]Known as "Nurse Novels," one book featured a nurse in the Vietnam War while the other was about a nurse living in San Francisco.[10]

These were not typical of her later works in poetry and prose. Some of her novels came close to her poetry in using experimental techniques and an abbreviated language. Howe had long studied the writings ofEdith SteinandSimone Weil,and sometimes pursues questions similar to theirs. She converted to Catholicism at the age of 40.[11]

As Zack Schlosberg writes inCleveland Review of Books,"Suffering and seeking are two major subjects of Howe’s fiction...", which he also found in her novelLondon-rose,written in the 1990s but not published until 2022.[11]

Howe has continued to publish novels throughout her career, includingLives of the Spirit/Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken(2005). She has also continued to publish essays. Some of her essays have been collected, includingThe Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life(2003)

PoetMichael Palmersays:

Fanny Howe employs a sometimes fierce, always passionate, spareness in her lifelong parsing of the exchange between matter and spirit. Her work displays as well a political urgency, that is to say, a profound concern for social justice and for the soundness and fate of thepolis,the "city on a hill". AsRalph Waldo Emersonwrote, "The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty." Here's the luminous and incontrovertible proof.[12]

Joshua Glenn inThe Boston Globewrote:

Fanny Howe isn't part of the local literary canon. But her seven novels aboutinterracialloveandutopiandreaming offer a rich social history of Boston in the 1960s and '70s.[13]

Howe's prose poems, "Everything's a Fake" and "Doubt", were selected byDavid Lehmanfor the anthologyGreat American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present(2003).[14]Her poem "Catholic" was selected byLyn Hejinianfor the 2004 volume ofThe Best American Poetry.[15]

Fanny Howe adding emphasis to her poetry at a West Tisbury Public Library gathering on Martha's Vineyard - 23 August 2012.

Howe'sSelected Poemswon the 2001Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.On the Groundwas on the international shortlist for the 2005Griffin Poetry Prize.Howe received the 2009Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.[4]

She was a judge for the 2015Griffin Poetry Prize.

Howe has taught atTufts University,Emerson College,Kenyon College,Columbia University,Yale University,Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyandGeorgetown University.[12]

Publications

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Poetry

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  • Eggs: poems,Houghton Mifflin, 1970
  • The Amerindian Coastline Poem,Telephone Books Press, 1975,ISBN0-916382-08-7
  • Poem from a Single Pallet,Kelsey Street Press, 1980,ISBN0-932716-10-5
  • Alsace-Lorraine,Telephone Books Press, 1982,ISBN0-916382-28-1
  • For Erato: The Meaning of Life,1984
  • Robeson Street,Alice James Books,1985,ISBN978-0-914086-59-8
  • Introduction to the World,Figures, 1986,ISBN0-935724-21-4
  • The Lives of a Spirit,Sun & Moon Press, 1987,ISBN0-940650-95-9
  • The Vineyard,Lost Roads Publishers, 1988,ISBN978-0-918786-37-1
  • [sic],Parentheses Writing Series, October 1988,ISBN978-0-9620862-2-9
  • The End,Littoral Books, 1992ISBN1-55713-145-7
  • The Quietist,O Books, 1992,ISBN978-1-882022-12-0
  • O'Clock,Reality Street, 1995,ISBN978-1-874400-07-3
  • One Crossed Out,Graywolf Press, 1997,ISBN978-1-55597-259-2
  • Forged,Post-Apollo Press, 1999,ISBN978-0-942996-36-4
  • Selected Poems,University of California Press, 2000,ISBN978-0-520-22263-2(shortlisted for theGriffin Poetry Prize)
  • Gone.University of California Press. 2003.ISBN978-0-520-23810-7.
  • Tis of Thee,Atelos, 2003,ISBN978-1-891190-16-2
  • On the Ground,Graywolf Press, 2004,ISBN978-1-55597-403-9(also shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize)
  • The Lives of a Spirit/Glasstown: Where Something Got BrokenNightboat Books, 2005,ISBN978-0-9767185-1-2
  • The Lyrics,Graywolf Press, 2007,ISBN978-1-55597-472-5
  • (with Henia Karmel-Wolfe andIlona Karmel)A Wall of Two: Poems of Resistance and Suffering from Kraków to Buchenwald and Beyond,University of California Press, 2007,ISBN978-0-520-25136-6
  • Outremer,Poetry Magazine, September 2011,ISSN0032-2032
  • Come and See: Poems,Graywolf Press, 2011,ISBN978-1-55597-586-9
  • Second Childhood: Poems.Graywolf Press. 18 November 2014. pp. 29–.ISBN978-1-55597-917-1.[16]
  • Love and I: Poems,Graywolf Press, 2019,ISBN978-1-64445-004-8
  • Manimal Woe,Arrowsmith Press, 2021, ISBN 978-1734641653[17]

Fiction

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Young adult fiction

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Essays

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Reviews

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References

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  1. ^Zimmer, Melanie (2008)."Fanny Quincy Howe".In Byrne, James Patrick; Coleman, Philip; King, Jason Francis (eds.).Ireland and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History: A Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia, Volume 2.ABC-CLIO. pp. 427–430.ISBN978-1-85109-614-5.
  2. ^"2005 Shortlist - Fanny Howe".The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.Retrieved2011-06-27.
  3. ^abFoundation, Poetry (2022-07-13)."Fanny Howe".Poetry Foundation.Retrieved2022-07-14.
  4. ^ab"Fanny Howe and Ange Mlinko Receive Major Literary Awards from Poetry Foundation".The Poetry Foundation. April 14, 2009.Retrieved2011-06-27.
  5. ^"Fanny Howe".
  6. ^<https://thebookerprizes /node/4394/
  7. ^"Fanny Howe".The Poetry Foundation.Retrieved2011-06-27.
  8. ^abc"Fanny Howe on Race, Family, and the Line Between Fiction and Poetry - Literary Hub".November 2016.Retrieved3 November2016.
  9. ^"Fanny (Quincy) Howe".encyclopedia.Retrieved2012-06-14.
  10. ^"Interview with Fanny Howe".The White Review.Retrieved2023-02-21.
  11. ^abSchlosberg, Zack (8 Dec 2023)."Out of the Seeming Blue: On Fanny Howe's London-rose".Cleveland Review of Books.Retrieved8 Oct2024.
  12. ^ab"Fanny Howe".The Academy of American Poets.Retrieved2011-06-27.
  13. ^Joshua Glenn (March 7, 2004)."Bewildered in Boston".The Boston Globe.Subscription required.
  14. ^Lehman, David, ed. (2003)."Fanny Howe".Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present.Simon and Schuster.ISBN978-0-7432-2989-0.
  15. ^Hejinian, Lyn;Lehman, David, eds. (2004)."Catholic".The Best American Poetry 2004.Simon and Schuster.ISBN978-0-7432-5757-2.
  16. ^Treseler, Heather (October 20, 2015)."Little Gods".Boston Review.Retrieved2015-10-20.Howe transfigures our quicksilver hungers and contemporary condition into an art true to "the secular rule of life." If Howe's voice is that of the escaping nymph managing our shipwreck, we might not be safer than in her tote, finding our hope in the empathy that is imagining.
  17. ^"Books".ARROWSMITH.Retrieved2024-04-25.
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