Fanny Howe

{{Short description|American poet and novelist (1940–2025)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=November 2024}} {{Infobox writer | name = Fanny Howe | image = Fanny_Howe_-_August_23,_2012 (cropped).jpg | imagesize = | caption = Howe in 2012 | pseudonym = | birth_name = Fanny Quincy Howe | birth_date = {{birth date|1940|10|15}} | birth_place = Buffalo, New York, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|2025|07|08|1940|10|15}} | death_place = Lincoln, Massachusetts, U.S. | occupation = {{flatlist| * Poet * novelist * short story writer }} | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | spouse = | partner = | children = 3 (including Danzy Senna) | relatives = Mary Manning, Susan Howe, and R. H. Quaytman | influences = | influenced = | awards = 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize | signature = | website = | portaldisp = }} thumb|Howe in ''Speaking Portraits'', {{Circa|2003}} '''Fanny Quincy Howe''' (October 15, 1940 – July 8, 2025) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. She was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts.<ref name=Zimmer>{{cite book |title=Ireland and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History : A Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia, Volume 2 |chapter=Fanny Quincy Howe |pages=427–430 |last=Zimmer |first=Melanie |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=agfvVQnBu9MC&pg=PA427 |editor1-last=Byrne |editor1-first=James Patrick |editor2-last=Coleman |editor2-first=Philip |editor3-first=Jason Francis |editor3-last=King |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-85109-614-5}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2005-shortlist/fanny-howe/ |title=2005 Shortlist - Fanny Howe |access-date=2011-06-27 |publisher=The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry}}</ref> Howe wrote more than 50 books of poetry and prose.<ref name="Foundation">{{Cite web |last=Foundation |first=Poetry |date=2022-07-13 |title=Fanny Howe |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fanny-howe |access-date=2022-07-14 |website=Poetry Foundation |language=en}}</ref> Her major works include poetry such as ''One Crossed Out'', ''Gone'', and ''Second Childhood;'' the novels ''Nod'', ''The Deep North'', and ''Indivisible;'' and collected essays such as ''The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life'' and ''The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation''.<ref name="Foundation"/>

Howe received praise and official recognition: she was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize<ref name="The Poetry Foundation">{{cite web |date=April 14, 2009 |title=Fanny Howe and Ange Mlinko Receive Major Literary Awards from Poetry Foundation |url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/foundation/announcement/041409 |access-date=2011-06-27 |publisher=The Poetry Foundation}}</ref> by the Poetry Foundation. She also received the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California.<ref name="Commonwealth Club of California".<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nationalbook.org/people/fanny-howe/ | title=Fanny Howe|publisher=National Book Foundation }}</ref> In addition, her ''Selected Poems'' received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets for the most outstanding book of poetry published in 2000. She was a finalist for the 2015 International Booker Prize.<ref name="The Booker Prize" .<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fanny Howe |url=https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/authors/fanny-howe |access-date=2025-07-09 |website=thebookerprizes.com |language=en}}</ref> She also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the ''Village Voice''. She was professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego and previously lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she taught at MIT, Tufts University, and other institutions for nearly 20 years.<ref name="The Poetry Foundation - Fanny Howe">{{cite web |date=2025 |title=Fanny Howe |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fanny-howe |access-date=January 8, 2026 |publisher=The Poetry Foundation}}</ref>

==Early life, education and marriage == Howe was born in Buffalo, New York on October 15, 1940.<ref name = Nossiter>{{cite news|url = https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/books/fanny-howe-dead.html|title = Fanny Howe, Poet of Unsettled Dreams, Is Dead at 84|date = July 14, 2025|accessdate = July 14, 2025|newspaper = The New York Times|url-access = limited|last = Nossiter|first = Adam}}</ref> Her father Mark DeWolfe Howe (son of Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe) was then teaching at the state university law school. When her father left to join the fighting in World War II, her mother, Irish playwright Mary Manning, took Howe and her older sister Susan Howe to Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Their younger sister Helen was born after their father's return from the war.) There the family lived through the children's childhoods.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/fanny-howe |title=Fanny Howe |publisher=The Poetry Foundation |access-date=2011-06-27}}</ref> Later in life, Fanny did not identify with her father's cultural background of the so-called Boston Brahmins, though she admired him personally.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Roberts |first=Chloe Garcia |date=2025 |title=The Art of Poetry No. 118 |journal=The Paris Review |issue=252 |pages=165 |quote=I've always had a peculiar kind of revulsion to my background [...]. Where my father's family came from.}}</ref>

Her father became a colonel and served in Sicily and North Africa. After the war he went to Potsdam as a legal adviser in the Allies' reorganization of Europe.<ref name="lithub.com">{{cite web|url=http://lithub.com/fanny-howe-on-race-family-and-the-line-between-fiction-and-poetry/|title=Fanny Howe on Race, Family, and the Line Between Fiction and Poetry - Literary Hub|date=November 2016 |access-date=3 November 2016}}</ref> Returning to peacetime, her father continued his work as a lawyer and became a professor at Harvard Law School.<ref>{{Cite web |date=1967-03-01 |title=Mark De Wolfe Howe Dies; Lawyer, Historian Was 60 |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1967/3/1/mark-de-wolfe-howe-dies-lawyer/ |access-date=2025-07-09 |website=The Harvard Crimson}}</ref>

Howe's mother had been an actress at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin for some time before coming to the United States in 1935. She also wrote several plays performed there and at the Gate Theatre.<ref name="lithub.com"/> Her maternal aunt was Helen Howe, a monologuist and novelist. Her sisters are the poet Susan Howe and Helen Howe.

Fanny Howe attended Stanford University for three years. She was briefly attracted by the political activism, and communism. In 1961—the year she left Stanford—she married Frederick Delafield, a microbiologist. They had no children and divorced two years later.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3401600343/howe-fanny-quincy.html |title=Fanny (Quincy) Howe |publisher=encyclopedia.com |access-date=2012-06-14}}</ref>

As a civil rights activist, she met fellow activist Carl Senna; they married in 1968. (Their daughter Danzy Senna recalled: "I remember my mother went to the courthouse to get some paperwork for the marriage and in Boston, where interracial couples hadn't been illegal at that time ... [and] the woman said to her, "Wait, I have to go in the back and see if this is legal that you two are getting married."<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |last=Gross |first=Terry |date=2024-09-03 |title='I want to write myself into existence,' says 'Colored Television' author |url=https://www.npr.org/2024/09/03/nx-s1-5095921/colored-television-danzy-senna |access-date=2025-07-09 |work=NPR |language=en}}</ref>) They also shared literary interests but had increasing personal conflicts. They had three children in four years: two daughters and a son.<ref name="lithub.com"/> Their middle child is novelist Danzy Senna. After Howe and Senna split up, Howe went on welfare for a period.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Roberts |first=Chloe Garcia |date=2025 |title=The Art of Poetry No. 118 |journal=The Paris Review |issue=252 |pages=153}}</ref>

==Writing career== thumb|Howe in 2008 She published two paperback original "pulp" novels under the pseudonym Della Field during the 1960s.<ref name="lithub.com"/> Known as "Nurse Novels," one book featured a nurse in the Vietnam War while the other was about a nurse living in San Francisco.<ref>{{Cite magazine |title=Interview with Fanny Howe |url=https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-with-fanny-howe/ |access-date=2023-02-21 |magazine=The White Review|issue= 29|date=October 2020 |first=Fiona Alison|last=Duncan|language=en-US}}</ref>

These were not typical of her later works in poetry and prose. Some of her novels came close to her poetry in using experimental techniques and an abbreviated language. Howe had long studied the writings of Edith Stein and Simone Weil, and sometimes pursued questions similar to theirs.

She converted to Catholicism at the age of 40.<ref name="rose">{{cite web|url=https://www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/fanny-howe-london-rose |title=Out of the Seeming Blue: On Fanny Howe's London-rose|last=Schlosberg |first=Zack|work=Cleveland Review of Books| date=8 Dec 2023|access-date=8 Oct 2024}}</ref>

As Zack Schlosberg writes in ''Cleveland Review of Books'', "Suffering and seeking are two major subjects of Howe's fiction...", which he also found in her novel ''London-rose'', written in the 1990s but not published until 2022.<ref name="rose"/>

Howe continued to publish novels and essays throughout her career.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Roberts |first=Chloe Garcia |date=2025 |title=The Art of Poetry No. 118 |journal=The Paris Review |issue=252 |pages=135 |quote=Howe's immense body of work–twenty-five books of poetry, twelve novels, two pulp romances, three books of essays, two collections of short stories, one book of prose rearranged from books past, six works of young adult fiction, and six short films–is [...] a sort of existential wilderness.}}</ref>

Howe taught at Tufts University, Emerson College, Kenyon College, Columbia University, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgetown University.<ref name="Academy" />

== Reception == Poet Michael Palmer finds that "Howe employs a sometimes fierce, always passionate, spareness in her lifelong parsing of the exchange between matter and spirit."<ref name="Academy">{{cite web |title=Fanny Howe |url=http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/881 |access-date=2011-06-27 |publisher=The Academy of American Poets}}</ref>

In 2004, Joshua Glenn of ''The Boston Globe'' wrote that Fanny Howe "isn't part of the local literary canon," but that her novels offer a rich social history of Boston in the 1960s and '70s.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/03/07/bewildered_in_boston/ |title=Bewildered in Boston |work=The Boston Globe |first= Joshua |last=Glenn |date=March 7, 2004 | url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060814175545/http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/03/07/bewildered_in_boston/ |archive-date=14 August 2006}}</ref> Howe's prose poems, "Everything's a Fake" and "Doubt", were selected by David Lehman for the anthology ''Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present'' (2003).<ref name="Lehman">{{cite book |title=Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present |editor1-last=Lehman |editor1-first=David |year=2003 |chapter=Fanny Howe |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-7432-2989-0 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RzunYckU4woC&pg=PA135 }}</ref> Her poem "Catholic" was selected by Lyn Hejinian for the 2004 volume of ''The Best American Poetry''.<ref>{{cite book| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=58J6YcsJuloC&pg=PA110 |chapter=Catholic |title=The Best American Poetry 2004| editor1-last=Hejinian |editor1-first=Lyn |editor1-link=Lyn Hejinian |editor2-first=David |editor2-last=Lehman | publisher= Simon and Schuster| year= 2004|isbn= 978-0-7432-5757-2 }}</ref> Howe's ''Selected Poems'' won the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. ''On the Ground'' was on the international shortlist for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Howe received the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.<ref name="The Poetry Foundation" /> ''Poetry'' editor Christian Wiman, announcing the award, stated,"Live in [Howe's] world for a while, and it can change the way you think of yours. [Her] work makes you more alert and alive to the earth."<ref name=wiman/>

==Death== Howe died at a hospice in Lincoln, Massachusetts, after a brief illness, on July 8, 2025, at the age of 84.<ref name = Nossiter/><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2025/07/11/acclaimed-poet-fanny-howe-dies-84 |title=Acclaimed Poet Fanny Howe Dies at 84 |first=Bill |last=Eville |website=Vineyard Gazette|date=July 11, 2025 |access-date=February 25, 2026}}</ref> Poet Christian Wiman wrote, "I can't overstate how important a presence [Fanny Howe] has been in my life, though we've probably spent a total of fifty hours together."<ref name=wiman>{{cite magazine |last=Wiman |first=Christian |author-link=Christian Wiman|date= December 1, 2025|title=The Tune of Things: Is consciousness God |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2025/12/the-tune-of-things-christian-wiman-consciousness-god/|url-access=subscription |magazine=Harper's |location= |publisher= |access-date=February 25, 2026}}</ref>

==Publications==

===Poetry=== * ''Eggs: poems'', Houghton Mifflin, 1970 * ''The Amerindian Coastline Poem'', Telephone Books Press, 1975, {{ISBN|0-916382-08-7}} * ''Poem from a Single Pallet'', Kelsey Street Press, 1980, {{ISBN|0-932716-10-5}} * ''Alsace-Lorraine'', Telephone Books Press, 1982, {{ISBN|0-916382-28-1}} * ''For Erato: The Meaning of Life'', 1984 * ''Robeson Street'', Alice James Books, 1985, {{ISBN|978-0-914086-59-8}} * ''Introduction to the World'', Figures, 1986, {{ISBN|0-935724-21-4}} * ''The Lives of a Spirit'', Sun & Moon Press, 1987, {{ISBN|0-940650-95-9}} * ''The Vineyard'', Lost Roads Publishers, 1988, {{ISBN|978-0-918786-37-1}} * ''[sic]'', Parentheses Writing Series, October 1988, {{ISBN|978-0-9620862-2-9}} * ''The End'', Littoral Books, 1992 {{ISBN|1-55713-145-7}} * ''The Quietist'', O Books, 1992, {{ISBN|978-1-882022-12-0}} * ''O'Clock'', Reality Street, 1995, {{ISBN|978-1-874400-07-3}} * ''One Crossed Out'', Graywolf Press, 1997, {{ISBN|978-1-55597-259-2}} * ''Forged'', Post-Apollo Press, 1999, {{ISBN|978-0-942996-36-4}} * ''A Folio for Fanny Howe'', Spectacular Diseases, 1999 (includes the long poem "Q") * ''Selected Poems'', University of California Press, 2000, {{ISBN|978-0-520-22263-2}} (shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize) * ''Gone'', University of California Press, 2003 {{ISBN|978-0-520-23810-7}} * ''Tis of Thee'', Atelos, 2003, {{ISBN|978-1-891190-16-2}} * ''On the Ground'', Graywolf Press, 2004, {{ISBN|978-1-55597-403-9}} (also shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize) * ''The Lives of a Spirit/Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken'' Nightboat Books, 2005, {{ISBN|978-0-9767185-1-2}} * ''Tramp'', Vallum, 2005 * ''The Lyrics'', Graywolf Press, 2007, {{ISBN|978-1-55597-472-5}} * (with Henia Karmel-Wolfe and Ilona Karmel) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=e80JLqFurgYC A Wall of Two: Poems of Resistance and Suffering from Kraków to Buchenwald and Beyond]'', University of California Press, 2007, {{ISBN|978-0-520-25136-6}} * ''Emergence'', Reality Street, 2010, {{ISBN|978-1-874400-47-9}} * ''Outremer'', ''Poetry Magazine'', September 2011, {{ISSN|0032-2032}} * ''Come and See: Poems'', Graywolf Press, 2011, {{ISBN|978-1-55597-586-9}} * {{cite book| title=Second Childhood: Poems|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YYQkBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT29|date=18 November 2014|publisher=Graywolf Press|isbn=978-1-55597-917-1|pages=29–}}<ref>{{Cite web|title = Little Gods|url = https://bostonreview.net/poetry/heather-treseler-fanny-howe-second-childhood|website = Boston Review|access-date = 2015-10-20|quote = Howe transfigures our quicksilver hungers and contemporary condition into an art true to "the secular rule of life." If Howe's voice is that of the escaping nymph managing our shipwreck, we might not be safer than in her tote, finding our hope in the empathy that is imagining.|date = October 20, 2015|last = Treseler|first = Heather}}</ref> * ''Love and I: Poems'', Graywolf Press, 2019, {{ISBN|978-1-64445-004-8}} * ''Manimal Woe'', Arrowsmith Press, 2021, ISBN 978-1734641653<ref>{{Cite web |title=Books |url=https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/books |access-date=2024-04-25 |website=ARROWSMITH |language=en-US}}</ref> * ''This Poor Book'', Graywolf Press, 2026, {{ISBN|978-1-64445-388-9}}

===Fiction=== * ''West Coast Nurse'' (under the pseudonym Della Field), Avon, 1963, {{oclc|38711773}}; Nurse Novels Publishing (republished in 2024) * ''Vietnam Nurse'' (under the pseudonym Della Field), Avon, 1966 * ''Forty Whacks'', Houghton Mifflin, 1969, {{ISBN|0-575-00560-2}} * ''First Marriage'' HarperCollins, 1974, {{ISBN|0-380-01850-0}} * ''Bronte Wilde'', Avon Books, 1976, {{ISBN|978-0-380-00548-2}} (revised and republished in 2020 by Grand Iota) * {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HKsv3sXetj8C&q=fanny+howe| title=Holy Smoke| publisher=University of Alabama Press| year= 1979| isbn= 978-0-914590-55-2 }} * ''The White Slave'', Avon Books, 1980, {{ISBN|978-0-380-45591-1}} (revised and republished as ''The Wages'' in 2018) * {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QugANM1bM_8C&q=fanny+howe| title=In the Middle of Nowhere: A Novel| publisher= University of Alabama Press| year= 1984| isbn= 978-0-914590-83-5 }} * ''The Deep North'', Sun & Moon Press, 1988, {{ISBN|978-1-55713-025-9}} * ''Famous Questions'', Ballantine Books, 1989, {{ISBN|978-0-345-36177-6}} * ''Saving History'', Sun & Moon Press, 1993, {{ISBN|978-1-55713-100-3}} * ''Nod'', Sun & Moon Press, 1998, {{ISBN|1-55713-307-7}} * ''Indivisible'', Semiotext(e), 2000, {{ISBN|978-1-58435-009-5}} (republished in 2022, with forward by Eugene Lim) * ''Economics: Stories'', Flood Editions, 2002, {{ISBN|978-0-9710059-4-5}} * ''Radical Love: 5 Novels'', Nightboat Books, 2006, {{ISBN|978-0-9767185-3-6}} * ''The Wages'', Pressed Wafer, 2018, {{ISBN|978-1-946830-07-4}} (reissued in 2020 by Grid Books) * ''Night Philosophy'', Divided Publishing, 2020, {{ISBN|978-1-9164250-2-6}} * ''London-rose | Beauty Will Save the World'', Divided Publishing, 2022, {{ISBN|978-1-7398431-1-3}}

===Young adult fiction=== * ''The Blue Hills'', Avon, 1981, {{ISBN|0-380-78998-1}} * ''Yeah, But'' Avon/Flare, August 1982, {{ISBN|978-0-380-79186-6}} * ''Radio City'' Avon/Flare book, 1984, {{ISBN|978-0-380-86025-8}} * ''Taking Care'', Avon Books, 1985, {{ISBN|978-0-380-89864-0}} * ''Race of the Radical'', Viking Kestrel, 1985, {{ISBN|978-0-670-80557-0}} * ''What Did I Do Wrong?'', Illustrator Colleen McCallion, Flood Editions, 2009, {{ISBN|978-0-9819520-0-0}}

===Essays=== * {{cite book| url=https://archive.org/details/weddingdressmedi0000howe| url-access=registration| quote=fanny howe.| title=The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life | publisher= University of California Press| year= 2003| isbn=978-0-520-23840-4 }} * ''The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation'', Graywolf Press, 2009, {{ISBN|978-1-55597-520-3}} * ''The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth'', Graywolf Press, 2016, {{ISBN|978-1-55597-756-6}}

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== * [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fanny-howe Obituary] on the Poetry Foundation Homepage * [https://web.archive.org/web/20080524024346/http://www.literaryhistory.com/20thC/Howe,F.htm Fanny Howe Informatarium] * [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2f59n5xn Fanny Howe Papers] * [http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/see-and-hear-poetry/h-n/fanny-howe/ Griffin Poetry Prize readings, including video clips] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20060226224752/http://www.kenyonreview.org/interviews/pfhowe.php Interview with ''Kenyon Review''] * [http://www.pshares.org/authors/authordetails.cfm?prmAuthorID=720 Fanny Howe page at ''Ploughshares''] includes links to Howe's contributions to Ploughshares that began in 1972 with an excerpt from an early novel. Later, she was a consistent contributor of poems, essays, and non-fiction. Howe was the guest-editor for a 1974 edition of ''Ploughshares'', and contributed to this journal as late as 2004. * [https://web.archive.org/web/20061229140242/http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/however/v1_1_1999/fhbewild.html ''Bewilderment''], a talk by Howe, with an excerpt here from a longer version presented 9/25/98 on the ''Poetics & Readings Series'', sponsored by ''Small Press Traffic'' at New College, San Francisco. ''Bewilderment'' was collected in ''The Wedding Dress'' (2003) * [http://www.modern-review.com/archives/v_ii/subjectmatter_howe.html Fanny Howe Interviewed by Jennifer Moxley] for info on Jennifer Moxley (link here) * Leonard Schwartz, [http://jacketmagazine.com/28/schwartz-iv-howe.html "The Wedding Dress: Meditations On Word and Life"], ''Jacket 28'', October 2005.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Howe, Fanny}} Category:1940 births Category:2025 deaths Category:20th-century American novelists Category:20th-century American poets Category:20th-century American women novelists Category:21st-century American novelists Category:21st-century American poets Category:21st-century American women novelists Category:American women writers of young adult literature Category:American writers of young adult novels Category:Language poets Category:Modernist women writers Category:Novelists from Boston Category:Poets from Boston Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:Catholic poets Category:Catholics from Massachusetts Category:20th-century American women poets