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from Cabbage Gardens

By Susan Howe b. 1937 Susan Howe

The past

will overtake

alien force

our house

formed

of my mind

to enter

explorer

in a forest

of myself

for all

my learning

Solitude

quiet

and quieter

fringe

of trees

by a river

bridges black

on the deep

the heaving sea

a watcher stands

to see her ship

winging away

Thick noises

merge in moonlight

dark ripples

dissolving

and

defining

spheres

and

snares

Place of importance as in the old days

stood on the ramparts of the fort

the open sea outside

alone with water-birds and cattle

knee-deep in a stream

grove of reeds

herons watching from the bank

henges

whole fields honeycombed with souterrains

human

bones through the gloom

whose sudden mouth

surrounded my face

a thread of blue around the coast

feathery moon

eternity swallows up time

peaceable as foam

O cabbage gardens

summer’s elegy

sunset survived

Susan Howe, excerpt from “Cabbage Gardens” from Frame Structures: Early Poems, 1974-1979. Copyright © 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1996 by Susan Howe. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Source: Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1996)

Biography

One of the preeminent poets of her generation, Susan Howe is known for innovative verse that crosses genres and disciplines in its theoretical underpinnings and approach to history. Layered and allusive, her work draws on early American history and primary documents, weaving quotation and image into poems that often revise standard typography. Howe’s interest in the visual possibilities of language can be traced back to her . . .

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