The Lives of a Spirit

by Fanny Howe, Collen McCallion (Illustrator)

In this brilliant work that transcends genre— lyric essay, prose poem, philosophical fiction— Fanny Howe pursues her realization that keen metaphysical inquiry is radically essential to everyday life. Howe adds the stunning new coda Where Something Got Broken to her earlier work The Lives of a Spirit. The quotidian brushes up against the infinite in her ongoing effort to answer ancient "Little word, who said me? Am I owned or free?" "With extraordinary self-scrutiny and complexity— and unmatchable musical poise and beauty— Fanny Howe examines our relationship with 'other' worlds, purgatories of various genetic, historical, theological"— Jorie Graham.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1987

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

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Described on its back cover as fiction, poetry, religion, and also lyric essay, prose poem and philosophical fiction, it’s clear that the collection THE LIVES OF A SPIRIT and GLASSTOWN: WHERE SOMETHING GOT BROKEN by Fanny Howe is indescribable. But from the start of its beginning section, first published in a now out-of-print edition from 1987, the best describer I can muster is movement. The poem, I’ll call it that, picks up and carries forth with the decisive power of thought. The intelligence and brilliance of its author builds paragraph by paragraph in evocative descriptions and lines that punch a cerebral TKO. The mind is only half of the trip, though, as it is spirit that animates the story: a struggle, a quest, to understand and embrace the unknowable. Such musings find me with not only the expected sense of awe that comes with the divine, but provide a tonic to the selfishly depressive state that I often dwell. For me, it is this reaching past the comfort and security of facts to the uncertainty and wisdom of not knowing that is one of the myriad things that makes life worth living.