I won’t be able to write from the grave
so let me tell you what I love:
oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter,
cheese and wine, a windy day, a fireplace,
the children nearby, poems and songs,
a friend sleeping in my bed—
and the short northern nights.
*a poem from Fanny Howe – who I had never heard of, or remembered hearing of because – oh, who knows! But, lemme tell you, she had one helluva’n interesting life; she was born in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1940, and died in July of this year. Her daughter is the novelist, Danzy Senna, who happens to be married to another novelist, Percival Everett (his book, James, still delights me in memory, so subversive and hilarious!). But, back to Howe. I love the poem above – simple, pure, true. For more on Howe read on, or check out her wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Howe
Fanny Howe was the author of over twenty books of poetry and prose; she was the recipient of the 2002 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Selected Poems (2000), and won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Council for the Arts and the Village Voice, as well as fellowships from the Bunting Institute and the MacArthur Colony. Howe also guest lectured and taught creative writing at Tufts University, Emerson College, Columbia University, Yale University and MIT. She was a Professor Emerita of Writing and Literature at the UC San Diego.
I am adding this photo of Howe because like the poem above – it feels and reads – to me – as pure and true. It is from 2003.
