Love and I: Poems

by Fanny Howe

The newest collection from “one of America’s most dazzling poets” ( O, The Oprah Magazine )

Set in transit even as they investigate the transitory, the cinematic poems in Love and I move like a handheld camera through the eternal, the minds of passengers, and the landscapes of Ireland and America. From this slight remove, Fanny Howe explores the edge of “pure seeing” and the worldly griefs she encounters there, cast in an otherworldly light. These poems layer pasture and tarmac, the skies above where airline passengers are compressed with their thoughts and the ground where miseries accumulate, alongside comedies, in the figures of children in a park.

Love can do little but walk with the person and suddenly vanish, and that recurrent abandonment makes it necessary for these poems to find a balance between seeing and believing. For Howe, that balance is found in the Word, spoken in language, in music, in and on the wind, as invisible and continuous lyric thinking heard by the thinker alone. These are poems animated by belief and unbelief. Love and I fulfills Howe's philosophy of Bewilderment.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2019

About the author

Fanny Quincy Howe was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. She was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Howe wrote more than 20 books of poetry and prose. Her major works include poetry such as One Crossed Out, Gone, and Second Childhood; the novels Nod, The Deep North, and Indivisible; and collected essays such as The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life and The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation.
Howe received praise and official recognition: she was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize by the Poetry Foundation. She also received the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition, her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets for the most outstanding book of poetry published in 2000. She was a finalist for the 2015 International Booker Prize. She also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Village Voice. She was professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

while poetry with religious themes is decidedly unchic in 2020, this collection of poems (written in a kind of old fashioned style) is still quite excellent. “Turbulence” “Black Mountain Boston” “Philophany” and her poems dated as years stood out for me. Rain is an important symbol for her, holding images and blending into each other on windshields as those images become depersonalized.

I’m reading her book of essays The Wedding Dress, which has helped inform me of her worldview, beliefs, and ideas. I think I wouldn’t have appreciated this collection as much if I were not reading that at the same time.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

really very nice it's my first brush with (this) Howe & I have plenty questions which prompt me to read more. It's interesting that Graywolf's blurb avoids words like 'god', 'spiritual', 'religion', 'faith'... Howe is, in this collection anyway, a highly dynamic writer on faith - i like that that can marry with Eileen Myles' approval

I think my stand-out here is Turbulence, a poem which narrates flight, the relative mundanity of commercial air travel & blossoms into icy atmospheres


=--
clouds were struggling to become gods.

twigs and snow-prints were their words.

Nature was the name for everything that moved.
Nature was consciousness.

Poor universe. Self-sufficient. Nothing can be added.
Only returned

[Karla Deniss · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[sheereen]

felt uneven

[june · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

"Fear of loss takes root in the blood of the lover.
Words form, interpretations.

Miracles: no one there where someone was.
Someone here where no one was."

"When love became a face
Down the wind blowing
With the street
Asking where you went
We were frightened
We couldn’t tell them apart."

"Everything we saw, we became.
This was before the buildings.
The subways, the tracks. I think
All life loved itself —
The weakest especially."

"The tremors in the heavens
Created weather. We all mentioned this
For years when we met
On our quest for happiness."

"I can’t breathe.) // Wherever / You go twice is blessed."

"But Eros hates coverings. / And prefers to be caught naked"

"From above I covet a mountain beneath my feet."

[xxbigtrucksmalld0g420xx · Rating 4 out of 5]

displays a deep appreciation and concern for the acute experiences of children, and a lingering traumatic remembrance of the second world war. not surprising given her background - raising three kids alone after running from an abusive marriage, being a child herself in the 40s, etc. - we need biographies of all the howe sisters!!! these are poems told in defense of, and from above - the angle of yaw (though much more successful poems than ben lerner's collection of the same name). i'd give it five stars but i have no idea what comprises a good poem, which is why i like to read them - 4 stars! fuck it!

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Howe’s associational style glitters like gemstones cast across each page, refracting truths so rarely observed among the interstices of life’s moments between inhalations and exhalations—glimpsed from the corner of the eye, suspended in the soft-eyed stare, briefly caught lurking in peripheral vision and held there for the curious to gloss over or carefully examine.

Favorite Poems:
“Turbulence”
“Philophany”
“Black Mountain in Boston”
“Destinations”

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many mothers I loved
Walked the underworld
To find their children
Sleeping under a ramp.

Fanny does an excellent job of exploring human suffering beyond time and being. However, I think the title does this book a great injustice. There is no true discovery of love or the way it interacts with our world. It's still a great read !

[Tom Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost touched you

On a Saturday

The wind blew easterly.
There was a jar of mums
On a table near the window.

Their yellows were calling
To each other.

Place-names
Were put back
In the pencil drawer
Before I saw
Your shadow.

[atito · Rating 4 out of 5]

so good

"So what is the teacher's purpose except / To offer a space for failure?"

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

my rating is not really an arbiter of anything here, I think this one just went over my head

[Brady · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kind of thing that would benefit from reading twice, or three times.

[Clay Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really impressive collection. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it this much. The poetry flashed brilliance and I’ll certainly recommend this to others.

[Mic Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe Fanny Howe was once a flock of birds

[Justin T · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was nice, would like to read some of her earlier work.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ❤️ nonviolence

[Carla]

I admired rather than enjoyed this collection of spare elliptical poems. But I suspect they will grow on me.

[Saudah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this one. I want to look more into Fanny Howe's work.

[Neko~chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as night philosophy

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

from Monastic Life: "What if every living part of the created world / Lifted itself up to help the next part. / What if you stood when I entered."

from Philophany: "Fear of loss takes root in the blood of the lover. / Words form, interpretations. // Miracles: no on there where someone was. / Someone here where no one was. // The stars that shine are sparks and coal / As if to show experience purifies existence."

from Black Mountain Boston: "They are a proud and poetic people. / You can tell. They can't be forced / To stay anywhere but never stay still. / They don't say die, they say disappear."