The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation (Paperback)

~ Fanny Howe (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Beautiful essays by Fanny Howe, a poet praised for her “private quest through the metaphysical universe . . . the results are startling and honest” (The New York Times Book Review) Fanny Howe’s richly contemplative The Winter Sun is a collection of essays on childhood, language, and meaning by one of America’s most original contemporary poets.

Through a collage of reflections on people, places, and times that have been part of her life, Howe shows the origins and requirements of “a vocation that has no name.” She finds proof of this in the lives of others—Jacques Lusseyran, who, though blind, wrote about his inner vision, surviving inside a concentration camp during World War II; the Scottish nun Sara Grant and Abbé Dubois, both of whom lived extensively in India where their vocation led them; the English novelists Antonia White and Emily Brontë; and the fifth-century philosopher and poet Bharthari. With interludes referring to her own place and situation, Howe makes this book into a Progress rather than a memoir.

The Winter Sun displays the same power as found in her highly praised collection of essays, The Wedding Dress, a book described by James Carroll as an “unflinching but exhilarating look at real religion, the American desolation, a woman’s life, and, always, the redemption of literature.”

About the Author

FANNY HOWE is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose. She has won a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation and an award from the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555975208
• ISBN-13: 978-1555975203
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #350,837 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The meaning of meaning, April 19, 2009

By	Just_Karen (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

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In The Winter Sun, Fanny Howe offers a collection of essay, autobiography, meditation, biography and poetry, combined in exploration of the writing vocation. Her memories are beautiful to read, as are her gently nudging, never explicit examinations of how faith and language are inextricably woven into and of each other. The word, the intention behind the word, the written, the spoken, the unsaid, the act of speaking, the act of hearing, all work together to transcend the limitations of language.

The power of Howe's own language is in great part derived from its calm, controlled arrangement. She is contemplative but not introspective. This is a book to study, for some of the lines fall like epigrams and must be revisited so that one does not fall into the trap of thinking anything Howe offers is that simple, that easy to comprehend at first read.

One of my favorite passages follows:

Revision is the opposite of repetition and religion. In the process of stripping the language back to an unnaturally naked state, you want to see what is hidden behind each word, what intention, what fact, then cover it up with something else. Revision is suspicious of first words and assumes they exist only to signal something else, something deeper. I revise what I have written in order to strip away fraud and get to the uncontaminated first intention. By slashing the curtain of words, I might finally glimpse the words behind the words and the silence behind those.

Very highly recommended.