Susan Howe

William Peter George Montgomery (Royal Holloway, University of London)
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Susan Howe is a pre-eminent poet of the Anglophone modernist tradition, among the most widely discussed and read of contemporary poets of that lineage. When her work first came to attention in the 1970s she was loosely associated with the avant-garde grouping known as the language writers, appearing in the influential anthology

In the American Tree

. She formed friendships with two prominent language writers, Charles Bernstein and Lyn Hejinian (the latter principally by correspondence). However, Howe’s work often looked out of place in this company and her later development shows her to have marked differences to many writers of that generation. Among these are a commitment to a dense and refactory version of lyric, to canonical authors such as Shakespeare and Dickinson (though such…

2439 words

Citation: Montgomery, William Peter George. "Susan Howe". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 July 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12104, accessed 19 March 2024.]

12104 Susan Howe 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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