Presence

A string of dust drops
from the corner of the ceiling
into the small room below ---
first still, then stirred softly
into motion
by a woman's breath.

Her respiration is warm
thickening with sorrow
while the white thread glistens.

Floss untwisted from the fine tatting
of a spider's craft,
it swings back and forth
widening the square pocket of air

Wendy Howe

http://www.poetrymagazine.com/archives/1999/octnov99/howe.htm

~


I began this as a free styler riff as a result of responding to how did the
Susan Howe day go inquiry by the Monk, and got

"the day began with an address by s/he to the many gender neutral minds,
constructed with thought alone, there to direct their celebratory and
affirmational force, toward the work of this wonderfully well known guild
member, who lets face it, when the sheeps and goats get sorted in latter
times by the children of our childrens childrens children in the next
century..."

and the choice to began a new thread concerned with a far less known, yet
equally worthy poet called Wendy Howe.

Wendy Howe is a NY state english teacher and computer teacher who i first
came across around the time i discovered GM's work, and impressed me
equally. There was a site with about 60 or so poems of hers there (though i
think she has since removed it) and i spent two days reading them, feeling i
had found a true trove of classy verbal gear, and what struck me was the
simple lyric Horacean construction, and when i wrote to her she told me she
had been writing since she was 15, so 50 yrs at it, and far ahead of my eye
in experience.

What clinched it critically, that this was poetry of a proof in the top 10
percent of contemporary practitioners, was that the site of these poems, was
a bit like the old BBC Get Writing one, and as each poem was added, timed
and dated (the sixty were posted over three or four yrs i think) it drew
waht were cleartly sincere comments from ppl who were not poets and just
simple appreciaters of this deft evocative lyric voice.

We had a brief exchange of e mails over a few weeks and she sent me her six
point Poetic outlining how she approaches the art of writing verse..


Though Elizabeth's Bishop and Dickenson, are seperated by two or three poet
generations (D dying 25 yrs before B was born in 1911), the these are the
two s/he the mind yokes into the Image underlining a metaphor of two career
trajectories: one recognised at the time with lots of chatter, interest,
awards and wide recognition, such as Howe S has...whilst Wendy Howe, is the
emily dickinson parallel..


this is a link to two of her poems

http://www.book.co.nz/howzz.htm

I will post the six reg Poetic in the post below this:

gra agus TS Eliot for Leavis manque scop of the plastic tank top and
fabtastic abba derivitive sidhe poetic Liam BY had, yah, nah, love and gra..