Penitential Cries

By Susan Howe "A new book by the incomparable and irreplaceable Susan Howe. Gossamer spun “ecstasies of exactness.” Silvery and fern like. A kind of holding hands with the dead. Emily Dickinson and sister Fanny Howe, who passed away this year. Libraries, mirrors, bees. Broken text drawings. Cuts and quotes. Phantom lights and closing waves. Treasure it!"–Herbert Pföstl What labor to live forever. Speak of the elect what can you do in all this world so much life in the little of it. In four parts, Susan Howe’s new book opens with the arresting long prose poem “Penitential Cries,” followed by a group of word-collages “Sterling Park in the Dark,” “The Deserted Shelf,” and finally a brief sparrow poem. Speaking of her new work written in “the evening of life,” Howe quotes Thomas Wyatt: My galley, chargèd with forgetfulness, / thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass. She says: “I love those two lines. Between trespass and penitence. In the wilderness of the Book Stack Tower inquiry i