One Crossed Out: Poems

by Fanny Howe

Fanny Howe's new collection One Crossed Out , presents a portrait painted from the inside of the life of a homeless woman. The poems speak in the voice of May, the girl crossed out, the bad girl, the mad and drunk girl, the jailed and drugged girl. May is swirling in language, and the language convinces us that we really are deep in the core of a human consciousness, near the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. May is a neonomad, bringing to the world the opposite of worldliness, offering a glimpse of the invisible.

Genres: Poetry, Language

68 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

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

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointments have gutted my gold lights.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Crossed Out by Fanny Howe is the best collection of poetry I've read this year. It tells the life story of a homeless woman named May.

The poems are emotionally charged, rising and falling with May's own emotional state. Some are happy and some are hopeful but most of them are angry and depressed.

From the collection my two favorite are "Plutocracy" and "[Sic]". The are two of the longest poems in the collection. Their length gives them the time to develop themes and imagery that the shorter ones don't quite have.

"Plutocracy" recounts the affects of Hurricane Andrew where perhaps May lost everything. Or maybe the hurricane is a stand in for the destruction in May's own life. "[Sic]" looks at May's psychology from the inside and the outside. The juxtapositions are jarring but needed to truly understand May.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Inverted tunnel of the self / Throat or genital search for the self / Light that goes on in the self when the eyes are shut."

"What's the definition / of capitalism? Sink or swim. / What's the definition of Apocalypse? Time."

"Still the mystery of your life is that it's yours."

[courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

this poetry is complicated and dense, butseems always to offer some point of access to the reader. a lot of the prose poems collected here swirl around themes of institutionalization and natural disasters, so the difficulty of the structure and, occasionally, of the language, feels very appropriate. and, again, she cuts the heaviness with slang and conversation and some very carefully placed humor.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all time favorite collection of poetry. I have probably re-read this 6 times by now. I am a huge Fanny fan. Howe big? Huge.