Concordance: An Evening with Susan Howe

“Poet Susan Howe delivered this lecture at Harvard Divinity School in 2019 as part of its great 200 year old tradition of poets and theologians communing in Cambridge to discuss what it means to exist. I listen to this lecture at least once a year to be reminded of how much I love language and poets— Howe is incisive, profound, and deliciously witty in that New England sensibility I miss in LA.”

“A joy to listen to this lecture recommended by @Lily (Susan Howe is lodestar for me). Will be thinking on all of it (Howe is a brilliant winnower + refractor, and one of the sneaky pleasures of engaging with her work is encountering the same themes again and again, but slant: Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Jonathan Edwards, Margaret Fuller, Emerson ...) but here is a snippet for remembering, beyond meteors and snow: "The material on my hard drive is beyond my fathoming. Frankly, it's a miss. What I care about most is the books arranged on two large shelves in my workroom, or ones I discover in a library. Their marginal notes/marks, enthusiasms, now seem as calming as night and the stars. They're my best friends. I'm a paper person. They are the real thing."”