Fanny Howe
Encyclopedia
Fanny Howe is an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She has written many novels in prose collection. Howe was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
, presented annually by the Poetry Foundation
to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.
of Dublin for some time. Her sister is Susan Howe
, who also became a poet. Fanny Howe grew up with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts
.
As a Civil Rights
activist, she met and married the activist Carl Senna, who is of African-Mexican descent and is also a poet and writer. They are the parents of the novelist Danzy Senna
, Lucien Quincy Senna, and Maceo Senna.
She has taught at Tufts University
, Emerson College
, Columbia University
, Yale University
, Georgetown University
and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
. She is professor emerita
of Writing and Literature at the University of California, San Diego
.
Poet Michael Palmer
:
Joshua Glenn:
Howe's prose poems, "Everything's a Fake" and "Doubt", were selected by David Lehman
for the anthology Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present (2003). Her poem "Catholic" was selected by Lyn Hejinian
for the 2004 volume of The Best American Poetry
.
Howe's Selected Poems won the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. On the Ground was on the international shortlist for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize
. Howe received the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
.
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is awarded annually by The Poetry Foundation; the Foundation also publishes Poetry. The Prize was established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly. The prize honors a living U.S. poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition"; its value is presently $100,000...
, presented annually by the Poetry Foundation
Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation is a Chicago-based American foundation created to promote poetry in the wider culture. It was formed from Poetry magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ruth Lilly....
to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.
Life
Her father was a lawyer, and her Irish-born mother was an actress at the Abbey TheatreAbbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...
of Dublin for some time. Her sister is Susan Howe
Susan Howe
Susan Howe is a American poet, scholar, essayist and critic, who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among others poetry movements. Her work is often classified as Postmodern because it expands traditional notions of genre...
, who also became a poet. Fanny Howe grew up with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
.
As a Civil Rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activist, she met and married the activist Carl Senna, who is of African-Mexican descent and is also a poet and writer. They are the parents of the novelist Danzy Senna
Danzy Senna
-Biography:Danzy Senna was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the middle child of three children. Her mother is the Anglo-American poet and novelist Fanny Howe. Her father is the African-American writer and journalist, Carl Senna, author of The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights and The...
, Lucien Quincy Senna, and Maceo Senna.
She has taught at Tufts University
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
, Emerson College
Emerson College
Emerson College is a private coeducational university located in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a "school of oratory," Emerson is "the only comprehensive college or university in America dedicated exclusively to communication and the arts in a liberal arts...
, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. She is professor emerita
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...
of Writing and Literature at the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
.
Career
Howe has become one of the most widely read of American experimental poets. She has also published several novels, including Lives of the Spirit/Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken (2005), and The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life (2003), a collection of essays.Poet Michael Palmer
Michael Palmer
Michael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University where he earned a BA in French and a MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance for over thirty years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists...
:
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 the polisPolisPolis , plural poleis , literally means city in Greek. It could also mean citizenship and body of citizens. In modern historiography "polis" is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, so polis is often translated as "city-state."The...
, the "city on a hill". Writes EmersonRalph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. Here's the luminous and incontrovertible proof.
Joshua Glenn:
Fanny Howe isn't part of the local literary canon. But her seven novels about interracialMiscegenationMiscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
loveLoveLove is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
and utopian dreaming offer a rich social history of Boston in the 1960s and '70s.
Howe's prose poems, "Everything's a Fake" and "Doubt", were selected by David Lehman
David Lehman
David Lehman is a poet and the series editor for The Best American Poetry series. He teaches at The New School in New York City.-Career:...
for the anthology Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present (2003). Her poem "Catholic" was selected by Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life , as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry .-Life:Hejinian was born in the San...
for the 2004 volume of The Best American Poetry
The Best American Poetry
The Best American Poetry series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems.The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year...
.
Howe's Selected Poems won the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. On the Ground was on the international shortlist for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize
Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language....
. Howe received the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is awarded annually by The Poetry Foundation; the Foundation also publishes Poetry. The Prize was established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly. The prize honors a living U.S. poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition"; its value is presently $100,000...
.
Poetry
- Eggs: poems, Houghton Mifflin, 1970
- The Amerindian Coastline Poem, Telephone Books Press, 1975, ISBN 0916382087
- Poem from a Single Pallet, Kelsey Street Press, 1980, ISBN 0932716105
- Alsace-Lorraine, Telephone Books Press, 1982, ISBN 0916382281
- For Erato: The Meaning of Life, 1984
- Robeson Street, Alice James BooksAlice James BooksAlice James Books is an American non-profit poetry press located in Farmington, Maine and affiliated with the University of Maine at Farmington.- History and mission :...
, 1985, ISBN 9780914086598 - Introduction to the World, Figures, 1986, ISBN 0935724214
- The Lives of a Spirit, Sun & Moon Press, 1987, ISBN 0940650959
- The Vineyard, Lost Roads Publishers, 1988, ISBN 9780918786371
- [sic], Parentheses Writing Series, October 1988, ISBN 9780962086229
- The End, Littoral Books, 1992 ISBN 1557131457
- The Quietist, O Books, 1992, ISBN 9781882022120
- O'Clock, Reality Street, 1995, ISBN 9781874400073
- One Crossed Out, Graywolf Press, 1997, ISBN 9781555972592
- Forged, Post-Apollo Press, 1999, ISBN 9780942996364
- Selected Poems, University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 9780520222632 (shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry PrizeGriffin Poetry PrizeThe Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language....
) - Tis of Thee, Atelos, 2003, ISBN 9781891190162
- On the Ground, Graywolf Press, 2004, ISBN 9781555974039 (also shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize)
- The Lives of a Spirit/Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken Nightboat Books, 2005, ISBN 9780976718512
- The Lyrics, Graywolf Press, 2007, ISBN 9781555974725
- (with Henia Karmel-Wolfe and Ilona Karmel) A Wall of Two: Poems of Resistance and Suffering from Kraków to Buchenwald and Beyond, University of California Press, 2007, ISBN 9780520251366
- Come and See: Poems, Graywolf Press, 2011, ISBN 9781555975869
Fiction
- Forty Whacks, Houghton Mifflin, 1969, ISBN 0575005602
- First Marriage HarperCollins, 1974, ISBN 0380018500
- Bronte Wilde, Avon Books, 1976, ISBN 9780380005482
- The White Slave, Avon Books, 1980, ISBN 9780380455911
- The Deep North Sun & Moon Press, 1988, ISBN 9781557130259
- Famous Questions, Ballantine Books, 1989, ISBN 9780345361776
- Saving History, Sun & Moon Press, 1993, ISBN 9781557131003
- Nod, Sun & Moon Press, 1998, ISBN 1557133077
- Indivisible, Semiotext(e), 2000, ISBN 9781584350095
- Economics: Stories, Flood Editions, 2002, ISBN 9780971005945
- Radical Love: 5 Novels, Nightboat Books, 2006, ISBN 9780976718536
Young Adult Fiction
- The Blue Hills, Avon, 1981, ISBN 0380789981
- Yeah, But Avon/Flare, August 1982, ISBN 9780380791866
- Radio City Avon/Flare book, 1984, ISBN 9780380860258
- Taking Care, Avon Books, 1985, ISBN 9780380898640
- Race of the Radical, Viking Kestrel, 1985, ISBN 9780670805570
- What Did I Do Wrong?, Illustrator Colleen McCallion, Flood Editions, 2009, ISBN 9780981952000
Reviews
- "On the Day the Blood Let Fall", Scott Bentley, Jacket 25, February 2004
- "The Clarity of Fanny Howe's Debut", Kimberly Lamm, University of Washington, Titanic Operas
- "Fellow Travelers", Karen Volkman, Boston Review, February/March 2004
External links
- Fanny Howe Informatarium
- Fanny Howe Papers
- Griffin Poetry Prize readings, including video clips
- Interview with Kenyon Review
- Fanny Howe page at Ploughshares includes links to Howe's contributions to PloughsharesPloughsharesPloughshares is an American literary magazine founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in the heart of Boston...
that began in 1972 with an excerpt from an early novel. Since then she has been a consistent contributor of poems, essays, and non-fiction. Howe was the guest-editor for an edition of Ploughshares in 1974, and has contributed to this journal as recently as 2004. - Bewilderment a talk by Fanny Howe, with an excerpt here from a longer version presented 9/25/98 on the Poetics & Readings Series, sponsored by Small Press Traffic at New CollegeNew College of CaliforniaNew College of California was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971 by former Gonzaga University President, Father John Leary. After 37 years, it ceased operations in early 2008....
, San Francisco. Bewilderment was collected in The Wedding Dress (2003) - Fanny Howe Interviewed by Jennifer Moxley for info on Jennifer MoxleyJennifer MoxleyJennifer Moxley is an American poet, editor, and translator who was born in San Diego, California. She currently teaches poetry and poetics at the University of Maine and resides in Maine with her partner, Steve Evans.- Poetry :...
(link here) - "The Wedding Dress: Meditations On Word and Life", Leonard Schwartz, Jacket 28, October 2005