Susan Howe (born 1937) is an Irish-born American poet and critic who is closely associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group of poets.

Early Life

Howe was born Dublin, where in her mother, Mary Manning, wrote plays and acted for the Abbey Theatre. The family moved to the United States when Howe was a young child. She grew up in Boston and now lives in Guilford, Connecticut.

Publications

Howe is author of a number of books of poetry, including Europe of Trusts: Selected Poems (1990), Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (1996) and The Midnight (2003), and two books of criticism, The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (1993) and My Emily Dickinson (1985). Her work as appeared in numerous anthologies, including the important L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E gathering In the American Tree.

Influences

Her main literary influences are Dickinson, Charles Olson and early Puritan writers like Cotton Mather. The link between these is New England, and Howe can be viewed as a New England poet in her sense of new possibilities an preference for an economy of means.

Other Activities

Howe spent some time in Dublin, where she worked as an actor and assistant stage director with the Gate Theatre. She paints and has worked as a radio producer. Since 1989 she has taught English at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

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