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Fanny Howe

Fanny Howe was born on October 15, 1940, in Buffalo, New York. Shortly after her birth her father, Mark DeWolfe Howe, left to fight in the war, and Howe's mother took her and his sister to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

What Did You See?

by Fanny Howe (1940—2025)

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3  <person id="5577" sex="2" role="author">
4    <name>
5      <firstname>Fanny</firstname>
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7    </name>
8    <life-events>
9      <date ty="birth" circa="false" suffix="ad">1940</date>
10      <text-value>(1940—2025)</text-value>
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13  </person>
14</author>
15

For Peter S.

I saw the shrouds of prisoners

like baptismal gowns

buried outside the cemetery.

On the canvas frills exhaled

singed wool and cardboard.

The angels arrived as lace.

Took notes, then stuck. Awful residue

from a small cut.

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Poets Book of Days

October 15

Mikhail Lermontov born, 1814

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Poetry Trivia

Question:

Who, in describing his aesthetic in a lecture, said, "Everything that has black sounds in it has duende"?

Answer

Federico García Lorca spoke these words in his famous lecture "Play and Theory of the Duende." Duende, as he describes it, is a particular type of soulfulness connected to the earth, death and illogic.

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