Fanny Howe's Beautiful Paris Review Interview

Fanny Howe discusses Samuel Beckett, poetry, filmmaking, moviegoing, and the monk's life with longtime friend William Corbett in a new interview for Paris Review. "When I’m at the movies it’s complete immersion and happiness. I feel I’m at last safe, a little bit like being at mass." Howe's most recent book, The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth, was published by Graywolf this year. An excerpt from this great conversation:

INTERVIEWER

What are your ambitions in film?

HOWE

I love working on short things. For me, the intensity of the work should result in a short movie. I guess to have them to hide behind and speak for me.

INTERVIEWER

Is this related to your statement that you “let the words write the poems?”

HOWE

Or call it improvisation. We each have our rhythm of attention, of how far we can go on our own brainpower. Then something else takes over. The words, the sound, the materials themselves. The struggle that the writer creates for herself is to make a place where she can get lost without fear.

INTERVIEWER

What are the great poems of the impersonal?

HOWE

The Psalms. Very early poetry, from Celtic to Chinese. Syriac to Greek. You would only be able to unearth proper words about God through doing a translation of these. My dream poem is to capture what they do, that incredible impersonal emotion, but there’s no one there.

INTERVIEWER

What is the value of poetry in such a brutal world?

HOWE

You’d have to ask that about all the arts. They lift everyone up. If you ask what good is music you’d say it’s an absurd question. Poetry is innate. You can’t not have poetry if you want to have a whole human being. I heard a Brazilian man at a party say, I hate going to poetry readings but my brain loves hearing it.

Read the full interview at Paris Review.