Susan Howe, Penitential Cries

 

To Whom It May Concern,It’s time for an update. Insertion of needle into vein for collection of bloodsample deeper than ruins are

I’ve been lucky I say tothe indifferent universe

“There is a great riverthis side of Stygia”

Geriatric tachycardiamurmurs pounding or fluttering even chaotic; an echocardiogram can onlytell so far

7:15 am. It’s hard tomake out the numbers on my watch because it’s an ordinary Timex with a smallface under glass and a narrow leather strap made to fit around a widow pariah’sthin arm while the Connecticut River flows to a cosmic unknown place where the“elderly” get lost. “The River of Rivers in Connecticut,” Wallace Steven’sgreat poem, is a poem of resignation. “The river is fateful, // Like the lastone. But there is no ferryman, // He could not bend against its propellingforce.”

There’s long been a deep precision cut with themetaphysical through the works of American poet Susan Howe, including in herlatest offering, Penitential Cries (New York NY: New Directions, 2025), offeringprose stretches that seem to break apart even as they interconnect. Her poemshave long held that particular tension: between breaking into component partsand small piles while simultaneously held together through sheer, impossiblecoherence. How does, one might ask, the centre actually hold? I’ve been readingher work for years now without fully able to articulate what it is that strikesme so deeply, while also finding it incredibly generative, a series of worksone needs to sit in for some time, to allow into and underneath the skin. Istill recommend her collection That This (New Directions, 2010), a bookthat included the death of her husband [see my review of such here], to anyonewho has experienced a recent loss, finding the collection enormously helpfulafter the death of my mother, allowing or even providing a permission toattempt my own examinations. Through Howe, connections of sound, meaning andform interact and interconnect underneath each book’s umbrella, whether that bethrough a particular subject matter through idea, or a phrase, watching thewhole of her life and thinking and research and immediacy fall into how herinquiries take shape.

Morning. Early light wherehave they lain him? Mary come running the door is open the Lord is gone. We don’twant to say goodbye even if we have to leave the “present” present with othergroups of retirees, pariahs, and ancestral stutterers. It is up to us even ifwe are dead even if there is nothing in the tomb. I know this, but someone iswaiting at the top of the steep hill covered in sand we must climb to reach thelost family fable. It’s easy, no pain in the knees, no balance, canes thrownaway—when we finally arrive there is Lady Honoria Dedlock seated at her deck toChesney Wold reading old love letters, even older than the ones our mother keptin a cardboard box beside the washing machine in the cellar. Children can see athousand miles off

Heart pictograph littlefrills.

As the back cover of this new title offers, Howe isthe author of numerous collections, including more than a dozen through NewDirections, including: My Emily Dickinson (1985; reissued 2007), The Europe ofTrusts (1990), The Nonconformist’s Memorial (1993), FrameStructures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (1996), Pierce-Arrow (1999), TheMidnight (2003), Souls of the Labadie Tract (2007) [see my review of such here], That This(2010), Sorting Facts, or Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker (2013) [see my review of such here], SpontaneousParticulars: The Telepathy of Archives (co-published with Christine BurginBooks, 2014) [see my review of such here], The Quarry: Essays (2015), Debths (2017) and Concordance(2020). Over the years, her lyric collage has expanded across multiplestructural points or perspectives within each collection: a prose section, avisual/collage poem sequence section, and, in this particular collection, a(relatively) more straightforward poem, each of which offer her usual density,collage and clipped language. Sometimes a line or sentence is cut off orwithout period, even in prose, allowing that line or phrase to hang in the air,having already provided its point, not requiring ending or punctuation; eitherway, we know the thought will continue, further down the line, down the page, throughthe collection or the one or ones that might follow. However thorough, completeor self-contained, is any thought or idea finished? Other times, thepoem-collage of her phrases and fragments overlay to a point of unreadability,showcasing a sense of visual cluster; providing, in its own way, tone and aclipped, blended and collaged information all at once.

Through the four sections of Penitential Cries—fromthe opening, title prose sequence, the visual collage sequence of “SterlingPark in the Dark,” the shorter prose sequence “The Deserted Shelf” and closing,clipped lyric density of the poem “Chipping Sparrow”—one might feel that thisis Susan Howe (born in 1937, for point of reference) feeling her age. Shewrites of, or quickly references, medical appointments and widowhood, managinga freshness across a lyric prose and stitched collage that manages such remarkabledepths, while simultaneously suggesting a skimming across the archive, literaryreferences and deep reading, across personal details and observations, acrossthe boundaries of time and the distances of human limitation.

I woke up this morninghalf out of a dream and thought Widows and Pariahs was a good title—forto be one or both is to be anonymous in soft rain on a quiet street waitingquietly alone. We feel even more alone Saturday and Sunday. Nevertheless, insuburb twilight there is happiness in listening before leaving the simplicity oflife, no matter what supernatural messages are nesting in physical therapy anddistinguishing marks. Frailty means nothing Night of my soul, not yet forced togo paperless, branches and brilliance, willing to run the risk of whistlingdust beside lists of other authors and what admiration and affection meansdisclosed to a worldwide interpreter who whispers low in each baby’s ear no oneknows what chrism in cradle. Little wandering sonic Juvenilia formed to bodylikeness you seek nothing but authentic substance, still depths of the mightyforest. Thank you love of the sea under whose breaking waves

Enjambment tipped in withwings extended

before forgetting theintellectual part not even two syllables not the least sting in thearm—sometimes even exultation

Hello Usurper