Keynote
“We cannot do without Fanny Howe.”—Ange Mlinko, The Nation
Book Title
Come and See
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- “These are poems of multiple selves and multiple eras, of oppression and the search for justice, of time’s fleeting and relentless passage and the inevitability of both. Sometimes stylized poetically and sometimes arranged in more proselike paragraphs, Howe’s lines reflect her meditative stance, asking questions, probing for answers, searching for truths. . . . Recommended for all readers of contemporary poetry.”—Library Journal
Body
Here a gun might go off,
There perhaps a broom would brush away the sticks of spring.
It was not your fault where you were dropped
Or where you took your first steps.
—from “After Watching Klimov’s Agoniya”
In Fanny Howe’s latest collection of poems, she beckons us toward the origins of both our collective knowing and our misperception. These poems move from one country to another and from one archetypal position—parent, grandparent, child—to another in the wake of the twentieth century. Certain movies provide an almost religious resolution to questions and experiences. “I don’t blame the children for anything,” Howe writes in one poem. “Their century is like a director who prefers his script to his actors.” With startling revelation and lyrical power, Come and See urges us to observe the world anew.
There perhaps a broom would brush away the sticks of spring.
It was not your fault where you were dropped
Or where you took your first steps.
—from “After Watching Klimov’s Agoniya”
In Fanny Howe’s latest collection of poems, she beckons us toward the origins of both our collective knowing and our misperception. These poems move from one country to another and from one archetypal position—parent, grandparent, child—to another in the wake of the twentieth century. Certain movies provide an almost religious resolution to questions and experiences. “I don’t blame the children for anything,” Howe writes in one poem. “Their century is like a director who prefers his script to his actors.” With startling revelation and lyrical power, Come and See urges us to observe the world anew.
List Price
$15.00
Purchase at
Purchase at:
About the Author
Credit: Lynn Christoffers
Praise
- “There’s a remarkable sense of immediacy to Howe’s morally and spiritually interrogative poems. . . . Howe’s inquiring eye gathers all manner of earthy details, while her thoughts ascend to a more encompassing plane as she laments the horrors of the last century and marvels over those who cannot ‘believe / in an earth without heart.’”—Booklist
- “Howe is plainspoken, serious, visionary.”—Robyn Creswell, The Paris Review (“Staff Picks”)
- “Come and See is an excellent compendium, very much recommended reading.”—Midwest Book Review
- “Dwelling in this book, one has the sense of being very close to another person, barely discernible, as in a dark theater. The poems, radically different from one another, form a system requiring total immersion, a suspension in the poetry, until the self, everything it knew and expected to encounter, has been forgotten.”—BOMBlog
