Susan Howe

Howe was born on June 10, 1937, in Boston, Massachusetts. She grew up in nearby Cambridge. Her mother, Mary Manning, was an Irish playwright and acted for Dublin's Gate Theatre. Manning was a close friend of Samuel Beckett, with whom she had a brief affair a year before Susan was born; this led to a rumour that Beckett might be her biological father, although Susan Howe has stated that DNA tests show Beckett was not her father. Her father, Mark De Wolfe Howe, was a professor at Harvard Law School and became the official biographer of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Her aunt Helen Howe was a monologuist and novelist. Howe has two younger sisters, Fanny Howe, who is also a poet; and Helen Howe Braider. Howe graduated from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts in 1961. ==Publications==

Howe's poetry includes Europe of Trusts: Selected Poems (1990), Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974−1979 (1996) and The Midnight (2003), Pierce-Arrow (1999), Bed Hangings with Susan Bee (2001),Souls of the Labadie Track, (2007) Frolic Architecture, (2010), "Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives" (2014) and That This (2010). Her critical work includes, My Emily Dickinson (1985), The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (1993), and a preface to The Gorgeous Nothings (2013). Howe began publishing poetry with Hinge Picture in 1974 and was initially received as a part of the amorphous grouping of experimental writers known as the language poets-writers such as Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Barrett Watten, and Ron Silliman. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry anthology In the American Tree, and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry. In 2003, Howe started collaborating with experimental musician David Grubbs. The results were released on five CD's: Thiefth (featuring the poems Thorow and ''Melville's Marginalia), Songs of the Labadie Tract, Frolic Architecture, Woodslippercounterclatter, and Concordance''. ==Other activities==

After graduating from high school, Howe spent a year in Dublin as an apprentice at the Gate Theatre. After graduating from the Boston Museum School in 1961, she moved to New York, where she painted. In 1975, she began to produce a series of poetry programs for WBAI/Pacifica Radio. In 1988 she had her first visiting professorship in English at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, becoming a full professor and core faculty of the Poetics Program in 1991, later being appointed Capen Chair and Distinguished Professor. She retired in 2006. Recently, Howe has held the following positions: Distinguished Fellow, Stanford Institute for Humanities; faculty, Princeton University, University of Chicago, University of Utah, and Wesleyan University (English Department's Distinguished Visiting Writer, 2010–11). ==Awards and honors==

Susan Howe was awarded with the American Book Awards organized by the Before Columbus Foundation in both 1981 and 1986. "She was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999 and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000." In 2009, she was awarded a Berlin Prize fellowship. In 2011, Howe was awarded the Yale Bollingen Prize in American Poetry. ==Works==

Poetry collections • The Europe of Trusts (1990, Sun and Moon) • Singularities (1990, Wesleyan University Press) • The Nonconformist’s Memorial (1993, New Directions) • Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (1996, New Directions) • Pierce-Arrow (1999, New Directions) • The Midnight (2003, New Directions) • Souls of the Labadie Tract (2007, New Directions) • That This (2010, New Directions) • Debths (2017, New Directions) • Concordance (2020, New Directions) • Penitential Cries (2025, New Directions) '''Chapbooks, pamphlets and artist's books''' • Hinge Picture (1974, Telephone Books) • Chanting at the Crystal Sea (1975, Fire Exit) • The Western Borders (1976, Tuumba Press) • Secret History of the Dividing Line (1978, Telephone Books) • Cabbage Gardens (1979, Fathom Press) • The Liberties (1980, Loon Books) • Pythagorean Silence (1982, Montemora) • Defenestration of Prague (1983, The Kulchur Foundation) • Incloser (1985, The Weaselsleeves Press) • Heliopathy (1986, Pushcart) • Articulation of Sound Forms in Time (1987, Awede) • ''A Bibliography of the King's Book or, Eikon Basilike'' (1989, Paradigm Press) • ''The Nonconformist's Memorial'' (1992, The Grenfell Press) • Silence Wages Stories (1992, Paradigm Press) • Bed Hangings I (2001, Granary Books) • Bed Hangings II (2002, Coracle Books) • Kidnapped (2002, Coracle Books) • Poems from a Pioneer Museum (2009, Coracle Books) • Frolic Architecture (2010, The Grenfell Press) • Sorting Facts, or Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker (2013, New Directions) • Tom Tit Tot (2014, The Grenfell Press) • Concordance (2019, The Grenfell Press) Essays and criticism • My Emily Dickinson (1985, North Atlantic Books) • The Birth-mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (1993, Wesleyan University Press) • ''Introduction to 'The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems''' (2013, New Directions) • Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives (2014, New Directions) • The Quarry: Essays (2015, New Directions) ==Exhibitions==

• Tom Tit Tot, Yale Union, 2013. ==References==