Come and See: Poems

“We cannot do without Fanny Howe.” —Ange Mlinko, The Nation


Here a gun might go off,
There perhaps a broom would brush away the sticks of spring.
It was not your fault where you were dropped
Or where you took your first steps.
                             —from “After Watching Klimov’s Agoniya”

In Fanny Howe’s latest collection of poems, she beckons us toward the origins of both our collective knowing and our misperception. These poems move from one country to another and from one archetypal position—parent, grandparent, child—to another in the wake of the twentieth century. Certain movies provide an almost religious resolution to questions and experiences. “I don’t blame the children for anything,” Howe writes in one poem. “Their century is like a director who prefers his script to his actors.” With startling revelation and lyrical power, Come and See urges us to observe the world anew.