That This

What treasures of knowledge we cluster around. That This is a collection in three pieces. Disappearance Approach, an essay about Howe's husband's sudden death--land of darkness or darkness itself you shadow mouth--begins the book with paintings by Poussin, an autopsy, Sarah Edwards and her sister-in-law Hannah, phantoms, and elusive remnants. Frolic Architecture, the second section--inspired by visits to the vast 18th-century Jonathan Edwards archives at the Beinecke and accompanied by six photograms by James Welling--presents hauntingly lovely, oblique type-collages of Hannah Edwards Wetmore's diary entries that Howe (with scissors, invisible Scotch Tape, and a Canon copier) has twisted, flattened, and snipped into inscapes of force. The final section, That This, delivers beautiful short squares of verse that might look at home in a hymnal, with their orderly appearance packing startling power:

That this book is a history of
a shadow that is a shadow of


Me mystically one in another
another another to subserve.

Author: Susan Howe
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 02/07/2011
Pages: 112
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.36lbs
Size: 8.75h x 7.57w x 0.31d
ISBN13: 9780811219181
ISBN10: 0811219186
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American | General