Second Childhood: Poems

by Fanny Howe

The new poetry collection by Fanny Howe, whose "body of work seems larger, stranger, and more permanent with each new book she publishes" (Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize citation)

People want to be poets for reasons that have little to do with language.
It's the life of the poet that they want.
Even the glow of loneliness and humiliation.
To walk in the gutter with a bottle of wine.

Some people's lives are more poetic than a poem,
and Francis is certainly one of these.

I know, because he walked beside me for that short time
whether you believe it or not.
—from "Outremer"

Fanny Howe's poetry is known for its lyricism, fragmentation, experimentation, religious engagement, and commitment to social justice. In Second Childhood, the observing poet is an impersonal figure who accompanies Howe in her encounters with chance and mystery. She is not one age or the other, in one time or another. She writes, "The first question in the Catechism is: / What was humanity born for? / To be happy is the correct answer."

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 8, 2014

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

[Haines Eason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd never claim to understand Fanny Howe's poetry, and I think she'd want it that way--she'd rather be seen and let be, as the wild corners of nature should be. She comes close with frank, lucid lines, and she just as soon drifts off, asking you to trust her enough to lose yourself in this life. Lovely.

[areej ♡]

"The moods of strangers determine your day. Will the driver be kind?
Please God let him be."

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

"John, John, John and John,
you're all so far from me.
Each like a walking stick inert
until picked up.

A person, the first I—
with few verbs left.

Vertical even when you laugh."

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was initially put off by the apparent simplicity of the verse; the concerns, however, more than made up for that, and, in time, it dawned on me that the style was appropriate to the organizing concept of the volume.

The inklings of a spiritual world that recur throughout the poems suggest the awareness of a larger, remote world "out there" that a child might have, lacking the experience and understanding of an adult. Considering this, I found myself truly impressed by the shrewdness the collection reflected. The reader is drawn into the situation of the speaker(s) through the elisions and omissions in the poems, having to attempt to bridge or to fill in the gaps.

The volume requires close attention and careful rereading. The poems offer some nice music in repetitions and alliterations.

I am sure I shall return to it and them from time to time.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please, the title poem here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. The title poem especially hit me. Howe, a Guggenheim fellow with more than 20 books out, has won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Foundation, and other award, and this collection illustrates why.
Some favorite lines:

"Only if you re insane or asleep/and the gods and animals/pound their way in/on a divine night wind."

"I have a fairy rosary called Silver who answers/questions when I dangle her in the sun at the window." "I decided to stop becoming an adult. That day I chose/to blur facts, fail at tests, and slouch under a hood."

"Your brain is still becoming/an independent being/while your heart always needs air." "I had an infant who was an orphan who lived/between my ears./Its sobs could only be heard/when it circled the pump."

"A heart is a mind that's only trying/to think without an unconscious."

"The tentacle is a brain too."

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poetry is good, fair, decent (I don't know), but I did not like this as much as Come and See, her collection I read last year. I will probably not remember much of this one, though one or two poems/lines really hit me.

"Figs, bread, pasta, wine and cheese.
These are not the subconscious, but necessities.
People want to be poets for reasons that have little to
do with language.
It is the life of the poet that they want, I think.
Even the glow of loneliness and humiliation.
To walk in the gutter with a bottle of wine.
Some people's lives are more poetic than a poem
and Francis is certainly one of these."

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read a lot poetry, but was surprised I hadn't read Howe. Her recent passing prompted me to seek her work out. In some respects Howe should be right in my wheel house. Catholic convert poet, poems supposedly reflecting that, etc. Well, this was the only book by Howe my library had. I usually really like difficult religious poetry. Levertov, Geoffrey Hill, T.S. Eliot, that's rock & roll for me. That said, this is a collection I could get virtually no traction with. Arresting images, lines, yep, plenty of those, but finding some sort of connective I found to be nearly impossible. I sense the mind, the very deep mind, behind these poems, but they're simply beyond me. One star, and my most grievous fault. To add another star would suggest I understood of these poems. I did not.

[May · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I could read these poems a bazillion times and find something new each time! There were so many nuggets of beautiful wisdom! I truly enjoyed it but didn’t always understand it!

[max ☆ · Rating 2 out of 5]

fun read. i don’t think i really got it to be quite honest since i’m only now starting to get into poetry. but i liked a few of the poems in here and the stories, looking forward to read more of fanny howe

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because this is a poetry collection, I can't honestly tell you the specifics of what it is about. It will be different for each reader. What I can say is that, while some of the poems included in this short book were blasé to me, others were profound. For more than that, you'll have to read it for yourself.

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't connect with most of the poems in the collection. It seems that the poet is self-indulgent and mostly talking to herself on each poem. There are 'show-stopping' lines sprinkled here and there, but I probably wouldn't remember most of them. Poet's style is too vague/esoteric for my liking.

My favorites are 'Loneliness' and 'Second Childhood'.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I often love Fanny Howe. I love the airy, fragmented way her images and ideas/statements create a mood, an atmosphere that is as ambiguous as it is emotive. The pitfalls: it can be too esoteric or alternately too obvious; the language flat and bland; imagery vague. That felt more the case to me with this collection. Perhaps my expectations were too high.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfect book

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Philosophy” should be stated just as poems, the book recalls, and I really enjoyed this one, which does just that, and in a way that is often humorous. The concept of second childhood is a philosophy. A motif I enjoyed was sparkly granite pieces. I found this book randomly on the library shelf today after a walk out in nature near a pond, and that reminded me of something that would be mentioned in the book. It also mentions the inside of a bird’s wing being the color of a doe, and I realized my cat 🐱Peeko’s inside fur is the color of a doe, which gives another poetic meaning to the one the poet mentions. The main mood is light and fun-like but there are some very serious parts too. I finished the whole book in one night. The innovative, consistent style of rhyme was another favorite thing about this book.

[effanineffable · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excerpt from the poem Second Childhood

“One ego is like a spider clutched to a web of its own making.
It turns to enamel and hardens on fulfillment.
Many egos fill up the whole body, every part to the tiniest hair.
Some egos are like fingernails that have been stifled by brittle paint.
All egos have something impersonal about them. They live deep inside like viruses and unlike gods who play in outer air.
But this ego covered my face with spider-dust as I lay in my bassinet.
Today I keep seeing gauze of a crystal kind, another kind of web of a type that doesn’t harden but swings and shimmers.
It’s the web-hood of a lost spirit.”

Excerpt From
Second Childhood
Fanny Howe
This material may be protected by copyright.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange little collection. Not sure why I expected something a little more autobiographical and waxing-reflective, but I did. That said, a good washy feeling from this book’s bubbles. Loved the poem titled Alas. Other hotspots:

“... the black winter verses /
are buds and sticks.” (The Garden)

“We don’t understand why we are here in the world /
with horrible grown-ups or what the lessons are that /
we’re supposed to learn.” (Second Childhood)

“In a Sabbath atmosphere you can stand and look backwards ... /
You can contemplate the peripheries... /
Everything is even on the Sabbath. The died and the living.” (The Monk and Her Seaside Dreams)

[Eve · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am trying to find poetry i like to learn more about short hand story telling. I checked this book out of the library liking one of the poems in the middle. Well I finished the book and retained nothing. like there was pretty words but the story wasn't stronge enough for me to retain it. You can be bad or good but never boring and this book committed the sin of being boring for me. there were moment where i thought something good was being said on a page and then i turned the page and it made me bored again. iIs making me rethink my Amanda lovelace review and reevaluating it. The poetry I like is the 1st verse of just one yesterday by fallout boy.

[Nuri · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted so much to connect with her poems, but I could not. There are traces of self awareness in every poem, but I was not able to decipher what Fanny has desired to convey through her abstract poetry. Maybe a future read will help me appreciate the poems for what they really are.

However, this one line stuck with me.

We are like tiny egos inside a great mountain of air. Pressed upon by the weight of ether, we can barely breathe.

[Amory Blaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

People want to be poets for reasons that have little to do with language.
It is the life of the poet that they want, I think.
Even the glow of loneliness and humiliation.
To walk in the gutter with a bottle of wine.
Some people's lives are more poetic than a poem...

A decent but not heart-stopping collection of poems. The strongest was Loneliness, which I read several times. I probably won't remember the rest, although there were lines here and there that struck me.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Vertical even when you laugh."

"Loneliness feels so much like shame, it always seems to need a little more time on its own."

"You may have noticed I'm naked/ and sliced by glass."

"I think the gods and goddesses were the last good grown-ups on earth."

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second Childhood


What is it?


an allusion

an elusive

spark of habit


a poem unforeseen

by a weird sister


a secret

quiet place

called nowhere


a stirring image

in a stranger’s brew


by Paul Hsu 3-14-18

[Saran Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The middle of the collection gets a bit bogged down in some long, meandering poems that I felt were a bit too cryptic to connect to, but Howe's use of imagery is beautiful throughout. Standout pieces to me were "Flame-Light" and "The Coldest Mother."

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself on the outside-looking-in for many of these poems, but the ones that I could find my way inside were so good it still gets fours stars, with the hope that the rest will open to me in time.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will have to re-read the poem, Loneliness, a couple more times I think.

[Erik Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

You're like someone crossing a border daily
a person who is to itself unknown.

You're like a fragment that can't find what has lost it
or illuminate
what's going on or what it's seeing through.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay but a lot of her poetry is hard to understand. My favorite poem was Loneliness.

[İpek · Rating 2 out of 5]

for miles
loneliness

[atito · Rating 3 out of 5]

i loved so many lines but there were other parts clumsy & heavy-handed, i think...

"I was such a cold mother a mineral was a flower."

[Chloe Salveson]

“For you, what is happiness? / Clothes in the washer / clapping all night.”