Gathered here are versions of Hinge Picture (1974), Chanting at the Crystal Sea (1975), Cabbage Gardens (1979), and Secret History of the Dividing Line (1978) that differ in some respects from their original small-press editions. In a long preface, "Frame Structures," written especially for this volume, Howe suggests the autobiographical, familial, literary, and historical motifs that suffuse these early works. Taken together, the preface and poems reflect her rediscovered sense of her own beginnings as a poet, her movement from the visual arts into the iconography of the written word.

Susan Howe is a professor of English at the State University of New York-Buffalo. Most of her later poetry has been collected in The Nonconformist's Memorial (New Directions, 1993), The Europe of Trusts: Selected Poems (Sun & Moon Press, 1990), and Singularities (Wesleyan University Press, 1990). She is also the author of two landmark books of postmodernist criticism, The Birth-mark: unsettling the wilderness in American literary history (Wesleyan University Press, 1993) and My Emily Dickinson (North Atlantic Books, 1985).

About the Author
Susan Howe has won the Bollingen Prize, the Frost Medal, and the Griffin Award. She is the author of such seminal works as Debths, That This, The Midnight, My Emily Dickinson, The Quarry, and The Birthmark.

Reviews
"Her work is a voyage of reconnaissance in language, a sounding out of ancient hiding places,and it is a voyage full of risks. ''Words are the only clues we have,'' she has said. ''What if they fail us?''" -- Geoffrey O'Brien - Poetry Pilot


Awards
Short-listed for Boston Book Review (Poetry) 1997.



Book Information
ISBN 9780811213226
Author Susan Howe
Format Paperback
Page Count 122
Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation
Weight(grams) 195g
Dimensions(mm) 231mm * 155mm * 10mm