From “sh” to “sh,” from “snow sward” to “foliage free,” via a “boundary
manic,” a target cadence marked.” “Sh.” The rest is white space.
Compared to the “Robert Lowell” of Life Studies, Howe’s “I”—female,
maverick, only half New England blueblood—is much less of an insider,
much more self-conscious about her particular origins. Her Boston is always
shadowed by her Buffalo. Accordingly, she rarely speaks in her own per-
son (e.g., “I was a deep and nervous child” [3]), preferring the voice of the
chronicler (“Joseph Ellicott, sometimes called ‘the father of Buffalo,’ was
born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1760 to Quaker parents from En-
gland” [5]), and the voices of others:
What are you crying for, Great-Grandmother?For all the ruin so intolerably sad.But we have plenty to eat. We are lucky to be living in the
United States, so very new and very old, lucky to be in the new
part. Every thing is clearer now we have electric light.Fig. 5. Excerpt from page 27 of Susan Howe’s Frame Structures (Courtesy of Susan
Howe)
150 Chapter 7