Why write if it is not to align yourself with time and space? Fanny Howe[i] [and place]
I have just read of your death. You are gone, plenty
more poets will come steaming along, few as unique.
The only book I had, I left in in aircraft, accidentally,
though most ‘Gone’, prose / poems, needed rereading.
I glance up from the screen, the forest is fiery, rush upstairs
with my camera. I know how quickly these things fade.
The end of uncertainty is death. Fanny Howe[ii]
I won’t be able to write from the grave
so let me tell you what I love:
oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter,
cheese and wine, a windy day, a fireplace,
the children nearby, poems and songs,
a friend sleeping in my bed —
and the short northern nights. Fanny Howe [iii]
[i] Fanny Howe, The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation, Graywolf Press, 2009.
[ii] Fanny Howe, The Art of Poetry No. 118, Interviewed by Chloe Garcia Roberts, Paris Review Issue 252, Summer 2025.
[iii] Fanny Howe, I won’t be able to write from the grave, Selected Poems, U of California P, 2000.
