SOURCE: “‘Out of My Texts I Am Not What I Play’: Politics and Self in the Poetry of Susan Howe,” in College Literature, Vol. 24, No. 3, October, 1997, pp. 124–38.

In the following essay, Marsh examines Howe's concept of self and subjectivity as evidenced in her body of work.

The recent publication by New Directions of Susan Howe's previously uncollected early work, Frame Structures: Early Poems, 1974–1979, appears to mark a significant shift in Howe's writing career. Most obviously such a publication, which “brings together those of her earliest poems she wishes to remain in print, and in the forms in which she cares to have them last” demonstrates the authorial control of the established artist, the privileges and rights which Susan Howe has certainly not always been able to command (Frame Structures, jacket cover). The publication represents the contradictions emerging from Howe's role as a mainstream and yet experimental poet. This...