Fanny Howe’s latest collection of poems, Love and I, arrived in the mail this afternoon and I have spent some time reading and thinking about it. Her poems have a constant sense of motion which is particularly fitting for her thoughts on love. I’ve always felt that love—romantic, familial, platonic, etc.—is never something that can be static. We either move forward in love by putting effort into fostering it, tending to it, even expanding it. Conversely it also takes effort to forget it by sabotaging it, resisting it and ignoring it. My favorite poem in the collection has a brilliant title that captures Howe’s thoughts on love, memory and motion. Philophany is taken from two Ancient Greek words, philos, “love” and the verb phan, to “think,” “deem,” “suppose.”
Philophany
The clatter of rain has a personal meaning.
This is the time to meditate or write down your dreams.
But the lover can do neither, can only wander
From room to room trying not to spill what’s so precious.
Around the lover are myriad sounds.
Thoughts shine through like water.
Forms, shapes, colors, stations are glorified in the morning.
Indecipherable, almost transparent.
Fear of loss takes root in the blood of the lover.
Words form, interpretations.
Miracles: no one there where someone was.
Someone here where no one was.
The stars that shine are sparks and coal.
As if to show experience purifies existence.
Experience was everything to me.
(This is what the uneducated would say.)
Every word must come from my acts direct.
But I know the difficulty too.
Who will believe what I do?
I’m very interested in reading more Fanny Howe. Her back list of poetry, essays and novels is overwhelming. Please let me know if you have any favorites of hers as a good place to start. I’m interested in reading all three genres.
Published in 1948, Nothing but the Night is John Williams’s, little known about, first novel. It takes place over the course of a single day in the life of twenty-three year old Arthur Maxley who has suffered a very traumatic experience in his childhood. When we first meet Arthur, he is alone in his apartment—he is most often alone—and after a night of solitary drinking and reading is just waking up from a dream. The story is intense and suspenseful from the very beginning as Williams slowly reveals the tragedy Arthur has suffered in his early life. By slowing down time in his narrative, we are given a realistic glimpse into Arthur’s fractured and damaged mind. For instance, Arthur forces himself to get out of bed and take a walk in the park, but never actually makes it to the park because he goes into at a seedy diner. The vivid and startling description of his breakfast is a clue that Arthur is truly suffering:
When I mentioned on Twitter that I was going to read my first Jane Bowles story, there was a rather strong, positive reaction to her writing. But the comments I received about Two Serious Ladies still did not prepare me for reading this story. This short novel, in fact her only one, is enigmatic, humorous, surprising, even shocking and sad all at the same time. Truman Capote’s description of the story, I think, sums it up best:
The plot of Stern’s novel in which an older man who has a love affair with a younger woman and divorces his wife, could have easily turned into the typical, hackneyed plot that such a book often veers towards. Stern’s intelligent writing delves into the nuances and complications of marriage, middle age, physical attraction and love. The story astutely and sensitively makes us aware of the sacrifices and heartache that each party in this complicated, all-to-human situation suffer. “Love,” Stern writes, “Famous, frozen word concealing how many thousand feelings, the origin of so much story and disorder.”
thebookbindersdaughter.com 