That This

by Susan Howe, James Welling (Photographer)

“What treasures of knowledge we cluster around.” That This is a collection in three pieces. “Disappearance Approach,” an essay about the sudden death of the author’s husband (“land of darkness or darkness itself you shadow mouth”), begins the book with paintings by Poussin, an autopsy, Sarah Edwards and her sister-in-law Hannah, phantoms, elusive remnants, and snakes. “Frolic Architecture,” the second section — inspired by visits to the vast 18th-century Jonathan Edwards archives at the Beinecke and accompanied by six black-and-white photograms by James Welling — presents hauntingly lovely, oblique text-collages that Howe (with scissors and “invisible” Scotch Tape and a Canon copier) has twisted, flattened, and snipped into “inscapes of force.” The final section, “That This,” delivers beautiful short squares of verse that might look at home in a hymnal, although their orderly appearance packs startling power:

That this book is a history of

a shadow that is a shadow of

Me mystically one in another

another another to subserve

Genres: Poetry, Read For School, Grief

112 pages, Paperback

First published December 29, 2010

About the author

Susan Howe was born in 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the author of several books of poems and two volumes of criticism. Her most recent poetry collections are The Midnight (2003), Kidnapped (2002), The Europe of Trusts (2002), Pierce-Arrow (1999), Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (1996), The Nonconformist's Memorial (1993), The Europe of Trusts: Selected Poems (1990), and Singularities (1990).

Her books of criticism are The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (1993), which was named an "International Book of the Year" by the Times Literary Supplement, and My Emily Dickinson (1985).

Her work also has appeared in Anthology of American Poetry, edited by Cary Nelson (Oxford University Press, 1999); The Norton Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (2003); and Poems for the Millennium, Volume 2, edited by Pierre Joris and Jerome Rotherberg (1998).

She has received two American Book Awards from the Before Columbus Foundation and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. In 1996 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and in the winter of 1998 she was a distinguished fellow at the Stanford Institute of the Humanities.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

In undergrad, the best gen ed course I ever took was called Death and Dying, taught by Gabriel Moran, who at the time was going through some sort of health condition that had him often come to class with bandages on his hands or his face, his voice rising to a thin whisper as he told us about world funereal rites throughout recorded history. It was an emotionally rough class to get through, and students dropped it steadily through the semester simply because they couldn't handle the grief it touched in them.

That This has a touch of this kind of academic anguish, filtered through Howe's sparse language and analytic eye as she juxtaposes her husband's death with that of found correspondences between members of Johnathan Edwards' family after his death in 1798. Her tone is by turns numb, desperate, and angry, as one might expect, and the first and most coherent third of the book made it nearly impossible for me to separate Howe's experience and thought processes from my own; the text invites an immediate level of projection and investment from the reader on the topic of how the living continue after loved ones die.

The second third of the book is an interesting refraction of the first, distorting Edwards' family letters into jagged shapes of prescient language that seem to evoke themes from the first section even through incomplete words and phrases. Like a confused stutter, this section marks the unintelligible nature of loss, and how to write the unwriteable.

The third section, from which the book takes its name, does too little for me to really know what it brings to the work as a whole. Composed of seven squares of verse and a final section of found/distorted language, it seemed like something profound -- or at least polemical -- was meant to have played out here, but I didn't know what to make of it. In fact, if it weren't for the prior two sections I wouldn't have been able to find any framework for how these seven "block poems" are meant to be interpeted at all.

Again, the first section is complicated and interesting, and the second is surprisingly successful, given its formal limitations. I'm simply just not connecting to the book's conclusion, despite the fact that I think I should be getting a whole lot.

[V Mignon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have this fascination with terms and what they do to the ideas they are conveying. Terms exist simply for categorization. I think I've been fascinated by this because my term is woman, yet I've never thought in my head, "I'm a woman." Instead, I think, "I'm me," but there is no easy way to describe "me" to people outside of me. Gender and sexuality are parts of our identity that I think shouldn't be categorized. They are amorphous blobs in our heads that lurch whenever we see someone appealing. But these terms don't define me, nor do they define you. It's really difficult to fully understand a human being and all the ideas they have housed up in their heads. So we rely on terms to make it easier.

Your identity is at the mercy of those outside of you, translating you in their own terms. Here we are, with that nasty translator rearing its ugly head again. The translator sways its venomous, diamond-shaped head in The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, mesmerizing the reader. Or our translation of con-man Dean by an equally deceptive con-man Sal, as the writer, in On the Road. Translators betray their native language by warping it into a form that is understandable by another culture. You are at the mercy of the translator, and many a time, I have had this thought while reading books that were originally French or Russian. Can I really trust the translation? Can I trust it to conduct every note of this symphony? With story-tellers, you're at their mercy because you don't know which part of the story is true. The truth is warped.

It is these con-men who make some of the most fascinating literature of our time, though. If there was one sacred con-man amongst us writers, it would have to be Vladimir Nabokov. And while Nabokov knitted the seeds of discord amongst translation, it is Susan Howe who carefully undoes the work.

For me, reading Susan Howe is like going into a candy store and seeing all those bright, vivid delicacies that stir excitement in me. But I'm simply a translator of these ideas. I'll admit, I came into this book with my own ideas and perhaps that tainted my reading. I find this true with most people, though. This is why we have discussions, to find a truth that has the most overlap of agreed occurrences.

In Susan Howe's That This, her chosen theme is of term vs. meaning. We have to have these terms in society. They provide us with all the structure we need. Every society has this Apollonian need for order and this Dionysian need for chaos. You can't live in just one world or you'll be torn apart, like Orpheus. One way that a society displays its need for order is through language. "Something has to remain to rest a soul against stone." These amorphous ideas are bolted down by language, by meaning. Language appears to be a "deliberately constructed manner as if the setting of our story was always architectural." I don't think it's just words though. Our habits and mannerisms, they form a pattern where there is none. Nothing tells us that we should follow these patterns, they aren't useful to us in any way, but we do. Why? I guess because it's a part of your identity.

How we interpret our names could be part of our identity as well. In remembering her deceased husband, Howe states that he always referred to himself as, "Peter Hare as in Peter Rabbit." Printed names are simply strangers on paper. I know the Veronica in my penmanship that is me. The name Veronica typed on paper is a stranger. It could be any other Veronica in the world, because there's plenty of them. I sing my name, because Veronica is always followed by, "like the Elvis Costello song." It's how I interpret my name. I see my name as a melodic tune. Some Veronicas see their name as religious. Other Veronicas see their name as Latin. Nicknames are simply how other people interpret your name, those close to you. However, you need that documented stranger of a name to exist. Typed on documents that state you exist. Howe questions, "If your names are only written and no 'originals' exist, do you have a real existence for us?"

Names flavor our existence. Objects define our existence. This is an idea I think Howe is fond of. We keep objects to comfort, to remind us of our identity. I have books, notebooks filled with writing, and colorful drawings I've done with my niece because those remind me of who I am. Objects state that the past exists. Objects from Jonathan Edwards states he existed just as objects of our loved ones remind us that they existed. I hold onto a picture of the woman I was named after because her writing is in the margins, as if I hold a piece of her soul. "Even if ideas don't exist without the mind, there may be copies or resemblances."

I feel like I'm quoting Howe too much, but I'm fascinated by her words. "In this aggressive age of science," Howe states, "sound-colored secrets, unperceivable in themselves, can act as proof against our fear of emptiness." Where there was once god, science stands as the authoritative power that quells people's hearts. It's difficult to take in the fact that we're specks in the universe, so everyone relies on personal beliefs that make existing easier. There are different ways that we feel. Howe relates this idea to the autopsy of her husband's body. The clinical words used to describe why he died takes away from the beauty of her feelings. Howe feels with her words, poetic in nature, and when those words are used to analyze someone who was real and dear to her, it's insulting.

Words work with and against us. Words can be flavored with a tone that breeds familiarity in our hearts. And names go along with that, because all names started out as words. A name doesn't denote all of your experiences, your ideas, or all the concepts you've learned. Once your name was uttered, what if the person beside you had a preexisting idea of what a John was like? They would take every little movement you make and imprint it on their thought. People outside of you see a different picture. "All I lack is your personal name on a tilted stone." I know this, having grown up in a family where my mother kept her maiden name. Everyone believed that my parents were divorced because they didn't share the same name. That's what society has taught them to believe. "We're together, we're together."

Really, it seems as if sound has a lot to do with how we interpret our identities. Sound is the only way that an outsider can understand who you are. Maybe sight as well. Seeing as I'm typing, I can only hope that people understand the more thoughtful side of me. Sight can be distorted though, as we've seen. When I type Veronica, I'm not that Veronica. Howe suggests that touch can lead us to understand, through the story of King Midas and his "dangerous gift."

"We are our soul but we haven't yet got the dead of it." I don't believe in souls, but identities are considered such a strong part in growing up that you can't help but see it in an almost religious light. In "That This," Howe's poetry has a strong connection to her essay. "Is one mind put into another in us unknown to ourselves," It's all part of this life-long quest we live, trying to understand what it is that explains who we are. And there's no easy answer. You can't get an answer from the people around you. It's an extremely personal journey, much like Howe's writing.

[Jee Koh · Rating 3 out of 5]

That This, about the death of Howe's husband, the philosopher Peter Hare, is an odd and sometimes beautiful book. The three parts that make up the book are very different, one might even say, at odds. Or so they seem.

The first part titled "The Disappearance Approach" is a rather conventional arrangement of diary-like prose entries. Beginning with the discovery of Hare dead in his bed, it proceeds by weaving fragments of memories with reflections on Jonathan Edwards and his family, Milton, W.H. Auden, Nicolas Poussin, and Ovid. The literary and artistic references give a sense of the couple's shared life, the Edwards reinforcing the New England connection, but they are also a rather familiar device to raise the tone and deepen the significance of one's loss.

Nothing particularly memorable is said about the writers. After quoting from a letter by Sara Edwards telling her daughter of Jonathan's death, Howe comments, "I love to read her husband's analogies, metaphors, and similes." In another fragment, she informs us that she's been reading Auden's The Sea and the Mirror. What does she get from it? "One beautiful sentence about the way we all reach and reach but never touch." Good enough for one's private journal but for a book of poetry? As if to make up for the threadbare observation, Howe continues, "A skinny covering overspreads our bones and our arms are thin wings." This writing is malnourished.

In the next part "Frolic Architecture," Howe has made type-collages of Hannah Edwards Wetmore's diary entries, with scissors, Scotch Tape and a Canon copier. The collages are startlingly beautiful on the page, clean and mutilated, in contrast with the six blurry and evocative photograms by James Welling that accompany the collages. Whereas the photograms bleed to the edges of their page, Howe's type-collages are sharply framed by their own cut edges in the middle of the page. In one collage, the words "ing body my body slipping" are sliced horizontally into two. They are followed by another line of words "d down full toward its own." After a bigger line spacing, the bottom half of the collage consists of three sightly misaligned columns of words:

secret sermon rough

a myst sermon of grac

a and i sermon sent to


The collages, like the one I just tried to describe, disrupt the conventions of type-setting and reading. The rupture echoes visually Wetmore's spiritual struggle and, by extension, Howe's tussle with grief. But the use of scissors, Scotch Tape and copier to produce this rupture feels like a form of play. It savors of art-and-craft. That this playfulness is intended can be seen in the title "Frolic Architecture." The first part of the book informed us that Peter Hare's father was "a modernist architect," and Hare's house in Buffalo, New York, into which Howe moved after their marriage, was filled with relics of family history. "Frolic Architecture" can be read, I suggest, as a playful subversion of the kind of grief memoir exemplified by the first part of the book. Its centered pieces also prepare readers for the reconstructed lyric of mourning in the third and final part of the book, also called "That This."

The first lyric, squarish in shape like all the others, continues in its diction the previous part of the book:

Day is a type when visible
objects change then put

on form but the anti-type
That thing not shadowed


The words are given heft because they are few in number. After reading "Frolic Architecture," however, the lyrics that follow also feel shreddable, contingent. Someone else may come along with her scissors and Scotch Tape. And in this way type is made to speak of anti-type, the visible to speak of "That thing not shadowed," form to speak of non-form. The present, re-written, reworked, is made to speak of the past:

That a solitary person bears
witness to law in the ark to

an altar of snow and every
age or century for a day is


For Howe, poetic form is inherited through refurbishment. I wish poetic language in this book is richer, less reliant on traditional tropes, but the book's formal innovation is stimulating.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4 stars based on the strength of the first section.)

What is there to say about death, about absence and loss and the space death makes in life? "Starting from nothing with nothing when everything else has been said," Howe writes, early in "The Disappearance Approach," an essay about the sudden death of her husband, Peter Hare (11). Then she quotes Sarah Edwards, writing to one of her daughters after Jonathan Edwards's death in 1758: "O My Very Dear Child. What shall I say?" (ibid.). As the essay continues, Howe considers her immediate domestic experiences after Hare's death (noticing the quiet of the house that morning, the New York Times still sitting on the driveway, sorting through Hare's email, papers, photographs, noticing the paperwhites flowering) but also reaches more widely, using Edward and his family's history and legacy to look at what remains of lives, what death leaves behind. Sometimes what's left seems to be "a negative double," the lost loved one coming back in dreams, or through the presence of his possessions, and in his death the traces of other deaths, including those of Hare's first wife and Howe's second husband (13). What's left, often, is bits and pieces: letters, diaries, notebooks, a scrap of a wedding dress, embroidery—and the essay itself is made of bits and pieces, too: a poem Howe wrote in 1998, the dictionary definition of "autopsy," the official autopsy report of Hare's death, the birth-dates and death-dates of Jonathan Edwards and his ten sisters. Howe also writes about finding "solace and pardon" at an exhibit of Poussin's paintings at the Met: the works on view are another way of looking at death, whether in the form of "Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake" or "Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe" (26). Howe writes about reading poems as a child with her mother, how her mother liked the ones where "people disappear into never-answered questions": and perhaps that's all everyone does, ultimately (28). This essay is my favorite part of this book: it's contemplative and quiet and worth reading at least twice (I read it once on the train, too quickly, then again at home on a quiet evening and a foggy morning, drinking tea and taking notes).

The second section of the book, "Frolic Architecture," takes both its title and its epigraph ("Into the beautiful meteor of the snow") from Emerson. (The title's about snow, too). Thinking about this section in terms of white space, in terms of accumulation, makes it slightly more approachable, but it's still tricky for me. These are collage-poems, made from fragments of Hannah Edwards Wetmore's diary, accompanied by spectral gray photograms by James Welling. This section was published as a standalone limited-edition volume by the Grenfell Press, and you can see some images of that book here. The copied texts that Howe uses are fragmented, cut mid-word so you see only glimpses: "her arms" then "could tread" then "air was dark" (41). Is this the distancing of death and time and history, the way that if we're honest we accept that what we see of the past can only ever be fragments? I'm not sure, but fifty pages of this was too much for me: there are striking phrases ("wild unbounded place," "ravished with it," "some parenthesis that darkens the sense"), and the collages as visual objects sometimes have appeal, but I found myself more bewildered than won over. "That This," the final section of the book, is made of "short squares of verse," as the back cover puts it. They look lovely on the page but I wasn't sure what to make of them; I didn't feel like I could find a way into them.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the multitudes of genres participating in this book. The lyrical essay about Howe's husband's sudden death got to me. Many lines at the end of paragraphs were just asking to be read over and over again: "Land of darkness or darkness itself you shadow mouth." The levels of archival interweaving were intriguing, but I wish this essay had gone further into the personal. Juxtaposing with the slits and slashes of found poetry and the strong 'That This' section of poems of a what "a solitary person bears," I could not help but desire more jarring experiments within the memoir installment, 'The Disappearance Approach.' Losing someone, or losing any part of a loved one, is an experience of absence unlike any other. It's rare when an author takes a major risk while exploring this topic, maybe because this topic is so fragile. The photographed letters were not only beautiful in their oragami-like arrangements, but also the words inside them were fun to read and find. I wonder if Susan Howe tried to combine all of these elements ~ the lyrical essay of a partner's disappearance, the digging through scraps, the solidity of the four sentence couplets ~ into a truly hybrid work on the confusion of loss.

[Dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I did not like this book of poetry as much as I have liked the previous ones I have read. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat and did not resonate the same way as the other ones have. While I found the poem and the form to be interesting at times, it was not as cohesive or connected as I typically enjoy. I realize that was probably the design of the writer, but it did not work for me.

The first section was easily understandable. It was pretty straightforward, a woman's husband died and she was mourning for him, going through their memories together. But then the second section was almost unintelligible. Which, again, I understand was most likely what the author wanted to do, being that grief takes reason and understanding and throws them out the window, but still, it did not work for me.

I enjoy being able to actually read what is on the page, not have scraps of words thrown together without much cohesion. Obviously, this is not a poem that I enjoy and I am sorry if you feel the opposite, but these are my thoughts on the matter.

[Michelle Hoogterp · Rating 2 out of 5]

The prose portion was beautiful. I didn't get the middle section of photocopied pieces...

[Pavel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should have been square.

[Claire g · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes.. she is doing things that I wanna be doing w archives and folding/cut-ups and the historical/the personal. Reread.

[Ben Platt · Rating 3 out of 5]

That This fell a little too far on the side of the conceptual for me to engage much with. In the realm of concepts and ideas, there are interesting things happening; her prose poem “Disappearance Approach” lays out a portrait of loss that is scrambled and dissolved in “Frolic Architecture;” the found and scrambled scraps of meaning that make up the books second part offer a portrait of how grief and loss dissolves the world and thrusts us into an inexpressible and incomprehensible space; the way that incomprehensibility offers glimmers of coherence and illusory correlations through occasional snippets of language that manage to break through the impenetrable “world of signs;” the different kinds of constraint at work in “Frolic Architecture” versus “That This,” each of which are pushing at the boundaries of the container that is language and the poem and what they can express; the way that being “seen” by the poem potentially offers a path to meaning that is inaccessible to those invisible to the collection’s language (rendering the collection equally meaningless). Like I said, these are all conceptually interesting, but I didn’t find that the execution of these ideas led me to any new thoughts, feelings, or experiences beyond what the description on the book jacket does, which is a kind of conceptual abstraction that will always leave me a little cold.

[Ivan Zhao · Rating 4 out of 5]

in my susan howe area with a fascination of objectivist poetry and text as image.


that this is a collection of meditations on her late husbands rapid passing and a collage of poems taken from the rare book library at yale. honestly I see a lot of where i feel like maggie nelson got her bluets inspo (or maybe this is just how everyone writes???). the way that it meanders between different pieces of texts feels liberating and groundbreaking in a contemporary personal essay kind of way. the substack asian girlies wish they were her.

howe has such a fascinating grip of the english language but I will say that the collage poems aren't the most interesting as pieces to be read, moreso the question of the book as a piece of artwork.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A grieving poet sorts the shards of her life shattered by the sudden loss of her beloved; without the introductory narrative poem, many of the shards in “Frolic Architecture” would be incomprehensible, mere glints on mirrored glass—a jumble of love relics, illusory correlations, reflective melancholy, and scraps of meaning.

“More and more I have the sense of being present at a point of absence where crossing centuries may prove to be like crossing languages. Soundwaves. It’s the difference between one stillness and another stillness.” —Susan Howe, “The Disappearance Approach”

[Amber]

Susan Howe’s “That This” is a heart-wrenching mind-bender. The handling of time (before and after, past and present, etc) in “Disappearance Approach” reflects the traumatic sense of loss she experienced with the sudden death of her husband. The following parts (“Frolic Architecture” and “That This”) encapsulate various other forms of handling grief: how the world is pieced back together with only parts of the past, how haunting and universal loss can be and how lonely it really is.

For more visit: www.ampspoetry.com

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written in the aftermath of the death of Howe's husband Peter Hare, and begins with Howe telling of her discovery of Howe's dead body. Hare's death is the central aspect of the first and largest of the three parts of this book.
The second is a word collage using fragments of the diary of Hannah Edwards Wetmore, followed by a third section of verse.

Interesting intellectually, yet oddly cold and unemotional. The second section reminds this reader that Susan Howe began as a visual artist.

[Muthee BM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this on a day I received news of the death of an uncle. The first section was meditative and lyrical, the second section made me think of what it means when language fails, or when conversations are had over centuries, the third and final part is still singing in my head. Definitely worth a reread.

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Returning home, after only a day or two away, I often have the sense of intruding on infinite and finite local evocations so wonder how things are, in relation to how they appear. The sixth sense of another reality even in simplest objects is what poets set out to show but cannot once and for all.
If there is an afterlife, then we still might: if not, not."

[CJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I wonder at vocalism's ability to rephrase or reenact meaning and goodness even without the wished-for love. Can a trace become the thing it traces, secure as ever, real as ever-a chosen set of echo-fragments? The sound of Peter's voice communicated something apart from the words he was saying. Listening
—I experienced early memories or mental images in distant counterpoint.”

[Susan Schefflein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an unusual book. There is no maudlin weeping. Howe faces her loss straight up and uses it as an opportunity to share something about the nature of reality and relativity with us. I have read it several times and marvel at its capacity to move me.

[Theresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Howe's sudden loss of her husband is conveyed in broken fragments of words/syntax.
Form is used to portray insight beyond expressible content. Reminded me of abstract painting.

[Ricardo Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece! Perhaps confronting death does require new ways of thinking about form like Mallarme’s “Tombeau for Anatole.”

[Marie]

Another mandatory reading
It was... kinda weird so once again I'll wait to study it in class to make my actual review

[_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frolic and
frolic

[Jason Crane]

Complex and evocative.

[Erika Gallion · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Loisa Fenichell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Susan Howe feeling like a mystic

[Lila Rosen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5, but the opening prose section is easily a 5. I'm still very glad those later sections were there (the collage pieces were incredibly striking) but oh my god that prose. Destroyed me

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only losers give this 3 stars

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has three sections, each remarkably different from one another, and yet connected by a recognizable poetic voice and interest. The first, "The Disappearance Approach" is about the unexpected death of her second husband. Add this to my saddest-reading-list-ever; it fits alongside Didion's The Year Of Magical Thinking and Gomez's Say Her Name. But these shortish prose-blocks are distinctly poetry, where the others are memoir. Of course, the lines are not quite so clear-cut between the two, but her frequent moves into the lyric, the shifts into non-normative syntax, and the recurring failures of language on the page to continue on are all gestures that belong more fully to poetry. The end of the first prose-block, for example:

He was lying in bed with his eyes closed. I knew when I saw him with the CPAP mask over his mouth and nose and heard the whooshing sound of air blowing air that he wasn't asleep. No.
Starting from nothing with nothing when everything else has been said

The description begins normatively enough. Then that "No." with its doubling function: affirming her knowledge and simultaneously rejecting it. And then the total shift into lyric, a statement that merely fades rather than ending, a kind of hopelessness in expression, the collapse of logic, the inability to express. No being the only possible utterance. That form shapes the rest of the section: straightforward, surprisingly unsentimental descriptions and memories, followed by a brief lyric diversion.

The second section is extremely different, cut-up collages of type. What's fascinating for me is how the mind always tries to create meaning, to render legible. These collages are for the most part un-readable, except in parts, and still there's an impulse to read slowly, to extrapolate from the fragments to create words, sentences, context. They're beautiful as objects and fascinating as textual remnants.

The final section is composed of sparse, almost hymnal poetry blocks. This was the least engaging for me, but that's because I'm less interested in the Christian metaphysical mysticism and more in the quality of language. The shift back into legibility is welcome, though, after the difficulty of the middle section.

I'm so glad I finally made the time to read this. Inspiring, as always.

[Posted originally at: http://alluringlyshort.com/2013/10/13... ]

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read by Susan Howe - found her prose/poetry in this incredibly hypnotic. I don't ordinarily enjoy this style but couldn't put this down. The book is divided into several parts - the first deals with the loss of husband. That I found most intriguing - the balance of the book, which comprises bits of poetry cut up and collaged, not so much.

Worth reading and considering....

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd little poetry/prose book. The middle part really intrigued me... it was like little, found poems, but I love how delicate and deliberate they are. I think you could read that section over and over and find new meanings and ideas that you had never seen before. This is not a passive book, you have to be active in it. The reader is invited into the story and the loss that Susan has found herself in. Not everyone could read this book... but many will want to, and many more, should.