SOURCE: “An Interview with Susan Howe,” in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring, 1995, pp. 1–35.

In the following excerpt, Howe discusses the stylistic and thematic aspects of her poetry and essays, particularly the layout of her poems.

Born in 1937, the daughter of an Irish actress and a Harvard scholar of American history, Susan Howe did not begin writing poetry until relatively late—having first explored possible careers in the theater and, more extensively, in the visual arts. Her earliest poems were published by small presses in the mid 1970s. In the 1980s, a number of Howe's poems that have since been collected in larger editions with wider circulation—such as The Liberties (1980), Pythagorean Silence (1982), Articulation of Sound Forms in Time (1987)—continued to appear as small-press books, while several anthologies of Language poetry showcased her work. In 1985 Howe's first book of literary criticism, My Emily Dickinson (North Atlantic Books), appeared. Her...