49:1 Spring 2003

FANNY HOWE

Catholic

The Spring 2003 issue also included poems by Hoa Nguyen, John Tipton, James McMichael, Fanny Howe, and others. Lyn Hejinian selected Howe’s “Catholic” for The Best American Poetry 2004. Howe’s note to the poem in that anthology explains that

“Catholic” is an effort at understanding Aquinas in contemporary terms, something that leads me in many directions, most of them surprising. (p. 257)

In CR 46:2 (2000), Geoffrey Treacle wrote the following in a review of Howe’s Selected Poems (California):

Howe fuses the tactics and strategems of what might be called "traditional" Language poetry with a radical, unembarrassed confidence in her lyric self—even as she lets her poems tailspin out of her hands—and this fusion perplexes a critical industry that insists on honoring the presumed incompatability of these modes.

Howe is the author most recently of The Wedding Dress (California), Economics (Flood), and On the Ground (Graywolf). Her story “Lotto” appeared in CR 47:3 (Fall 2001). 

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