43:4 Autumn 1997

SUSAN HOWE

from Arisbe

The Autumn 1997 “Contemporary Poetry & Poetics” issue also featured the first appearance in Chicago Review of poet and scholar Susan Howe. This excerpt from Arisbe was later transformed into the opening section of Pierce-Arrow (New Directions, 1999), Howe’s biopic and prosaic book-length poem of the 19th-Century American philosopher-scientist, Charles Sanders Peirce and his wife Juliette. Arisbe reveals Howe’s ongoing fascination with New England Puritan culture, and serves as a point of departure for Pierce-Arrow’s intricate weaving of Husserl, Santayana, and Schiller. Howe, a professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo since 1989, published her most recent collection, The Midnight (New Directions), in 2003.

[KM, 2006]

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