Gone

New California Poetry

by Fanny Howe

This collection of new poems by one of the most respected poets in the United States uses motifs of advance and recovery, doubt and conviction―in an emotional relation to the known world. Heralded as "one of our most vital, unclassifiable writers" by the Voice Literary Supplement, Fanny Howe has published more than twenty books and is the recipient of the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition, her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the Most Outstanding Book of Poetry Published in 2000 from the Academy of American Poets.

The poems in Gone describe the transit of a psyche, driven by uncertainty and by love, through various stations and experiences. This volume of short poems and one lyrical essay, all written in the last five years, is broken into five parts; and the longest of these, "The Passion," consecrates the contradictions between these two emotions. The New York Times Book Review said, "Howe has made a long-term project of trying to determine how we fit into God's world, and her aim is both true and marvelously free of sentimental piety." With Gone, readers will have the opportunity to experience firsthand Howe’s continuation of that elusive and fascinating endeavor.

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

initially felt a bit too academic w/o having something else to hold them up, but as i read on i really fell into this collection and didn't lift my head until the very end. i feel like they work best all together, feeding off each other's concepts and words. deals w/what to do w consciousness (how far it can go), how consciousness can be translated into words and the pain of an inexact vocabulary, how to relate to other's consciousness, how to trust yourself, others, anything at all, need need need (fact of being a body), how to escape aloneness, what kind of escape do we want? etc. amongst much more I'm sure I was not sensitive to on the first read/are not possible to be articulated in a shitty goodreads review. ps even tho I said I think the poems work best together, here is one of my favourites all by itself:

"I was hungry for love

It was pathetic the stones
I threw or smashed my mouth on
in my pathology of starvation

This hunger drove me
into the vineyards
with their dropping pebble-gray fruits

One mouth opened and sucked
out some of my love
Fermented mouth and tongue

I hung in the tree
of that one's torso and bones
It was the fruit I had been hunting"

[Gus]

“Doubt” has been really important to me for a few years now so it was interesting to read it alongside the other poems. Howe’s voice is addicting.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will always be interested in a book that approaches theology with both humility and curiosity. Howe admits that it is a search--in the first section of the book she looks for some alternative "she" that will mean she has discovered something. But then it's her walking through the fourteen stations of the cross, as a speaker who is experiencing each moment as it happens, that makes me interested in participating in her religion.

[hjh]

"She said I said why/ fear there's nothing to it/ at any minute/ a stepping out of and into/ no columns no firmament/ Most of each thing/ is whole but contingent/ on something about/the nearest one to it" (4)

"Where I grew life/ and died as a little apple" (16)

"The holes in our haloes/ widen the higher we die" (18)

"While we would all like to know if the individual person is a phenomenon either culturally or spiritually conceived and why everyone doesn't kill everyone else, including themselves, since they can-- poets act out the problem with their words" (23)

"Why not say 'heart-sick' instead of 'despairing'?/ Why not say 'despairing' instead of 'depressed'?/ Is there, perhaps, a quality in each person--hidden like a laugh inside a sob--that loves even more than it loves to live?/If there is, can it be expressed in the form of the lyric line?"(24)

Dostoyevsky-- "My hosannah has gone through a great furnace of doubt" (24)

"Yet strangely in this moment that doubt shows itself to be the physical double to belief; it is the quality that nourishes willpower, and the one that is the invisible engine behind every step taken./ Doubt is what allows a single gesture to have a heart" (25)

"Hope seems to resist extermination as much as a roach does" (26)

"I used time almost wantonly/ in that bald but sensual sky/ to give me gusts/ and more measurement/ not to snap the stars shut/ but Joseph said/ you really ought/ to tender how you sail by eye/ your soul is just a length of baby" (31)

"Self, come in/ and be as vigilant/ as the alien you are" (32)

"Come back/ to three lines of light on a little river--/ one pink, one green and one aluminum--come back to being" (53)

"like a day's delivery of everything/ past/ and nothing to hope for/ (but recollection)/ the sky had the last word/ It was imagination dying" (54)

"Snow-moss silvers the trees...Why does a heart wear its eyes/ into hell/ like slivers of false sunshine" (81)

"Unfortunate girl always laughing" (92)

"Flowers attract scissors" (95)

"You have to care for your soul/ because time is transparent/and slides between you and your soul/ when someone else has it/ He is slipping my own/ A binge of memories the color of raw sugar/It tastes delicious with the past" (96)

"Useless jealousy/ Either you're loved or you aren't" (99)

"Pain is the body's grinding/Pain sticks to the human brain/the way pollen sticks to a stamen" (100)

"His father was an angel/ her mother man/ The end of his line/ Began with an organ/ She carried her lyrics around in a bag/ Along with some shoes and wings/ Left one pair to pretend she was returning/ But how could she?/ Love is the movement towards perfection" (109)

"I was hungry for love/ It was pathetic the stones/ I threw or smashed my mouth on/ in my pathology of starvation/ this hunger drove me/ into the vineyards/ with their drooping pebble-gray fruits/ One mouth opened and sucked/ out some of my love...It was the fruit I had been hunting" (110)

"The margin of error/ now an aura--silver and slick/ as a mirror" (115)

"Is all real stuff inching/ Through Limbo's unfamiliar weather" (121)

[june · Rating 4 out of 5]

poetry:

"I used time almost wantonly
in that bald but sensual sky

to give me gusts
and more measurement

not to snap the stars shut
but Joseph said
you really ought

to tender how you sail by eye your soul
is just a length of baby"

"'Heart, come along and be as heartless as you know you are.'
Red comrades inoperably close"

"When training to die
with your back to the train

you cry green green
to a blind Metropolitan

it means
you can’t and you can"

"... lips of someone else // pluraling as one into someone I missed // not you yes still you yes you: no you"

"gilding a frame for my rich
neurotic eros
there was someone like someone else

concocted extra-spatially
like a day’s delivery of everything
past

and nothing to hope for
(but recollection)

the sky had the last word

It was imagination dying"

"She didn’t understand
it wasn’t her corporeal self
but her numinous inner body that he had pinned to his chest
and the wires pulled on his skin whenever he turned in bed

—the stains on the palms of his hands, red"

"Somewhere he’s not calling

Near or far, before or behind
the erected cities

await the turning

since the dead precede the living
and also the becoming"

"He swallowed my soul
so now I know
soul is physical
This was a test

Soul can be stolen
by a human kiss
A portion of soul
(I feel it missing)

Can it grow back"

"Get down on your knees God
And pray all cruelty
Ceasing — will — before
Your heart is for rent or sold
I know it’s your heart
By knowing how it feels
(inside another)"

prose:

"While we would all like to know if the individual person is a phenomenon either culturally or spiritually conceived and why everyone doesn’t kill everyone else, including themselves, since they can—poets act out the problem with their words."

"And now is the moment where doubt—as an active function—emerges and magnifies the world. It eliminates mem- ory. And it turns eyesight so far outwards, the vision expands. A person feels as if she is the figure inside a mirror, looking outwards for her moves. She is a forgery."

"You have to make yourself believe. Is this possible? Can you turn “void” into “God” by switching the words over and over again?"

"But even then, it seems, the dream of having no doubt continues, finding its way into love and work where choices matter exactly as much as they don’t matter—at least when luck is working in your favor."

[moonshaped ♡]

"𝘛𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦
𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 “𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦”
𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦’𝘴
𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥, “𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘐 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘷𝘦.”

[A L]

I loved the pieces in The Splinter and The Passion.

[Lightsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The puzzle with Howe is twofold, maybe: context and sequence. Because even the long poem here, "The Passion," doesn't necessarily have a moving forward character, although it appears to be a poem of grief (context missing) and generally poems of grief arrive at a somewhat comforted state eventually. But, you know, I think it's a real victory to write a sustained poem about grief that develops, that goes places, but that doesn't sink into artificial consolation. Loose ends please.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

He is felt as a feeling she feels him
She doesn't know why he to him being
Battle-catching mother
Whom she caught at the circulation
Still remembers
In her rose-lipped perceptor

(Love-thorn or birthing)



There is something between them

It climbs colorlike
The shades of pain
Describing their skins
Like a map's edge of ocean
It laps from her to him

They do feel that third person!

- from "Shadows"

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fanny Howe has no quams with immersing herself in a mystery that is intended to be felt rather than articulated. Her short lyrics seem to float in and out of time and memory. nestled in this book of poetry is a lyric essay!

[Matt Ely · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does best what poetry does uniquely: shock you into a universe where words take you beyond themselves into a feeling for which words do no justice. You are left wanting more because it gives you just enough to be afraid or doubt or wonder, but leaves you there in that "almost."