SOURCE: “Play and the Poetry of Susan Howe,” in Songs of Degrees: Essays on Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, University of Alabama Press, 1994, pp. 114–22.

In the following essay, Taggart discusses the importance of language play in Pythagorean Silence.

Play, first and last, is the sovereign principle of composition and the source of all our closest attention to poetry. Lacking the significant play of language, poetry becomes a stale consideration of style and attitude, something merely to be studied by means of chronology and paraphrase for some vaguely defined cultural benefit. Lacking significant play, poetry becomes merely the dim reflection of such study. It is the quality of play, its range and depth, which determines the quality of the poetry. For play, in being most truly representative of the dynamic nature of language, is also most truly representative of the human.

The poetry of Susan Howe's Pythagorean Silence is exceptional...