SOURCE: Perloff, Marjorie. “‘Collision or Collusion with History’: Susan Howe's Articulation of Sound Forms in Time.” In Poetic License: Essays on Modernist and Postmodernist Lyric, pp. 297-310. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Perloff perceives Howe's verse as a combination of three elements—the historical, the mythic, the linguistic—and informed by “an urgent, if highly individual, feminist perspective.”

Flocks roost before dark Coveys nestle and settle 

Meditation of a world's vast Memory 

Predominance pitched across history Collision or collusion with history 

—Howe, Articulation

The two words are identical except for a single letter: according to the OED [Oxford English Dictionary], collision means “1. The action of colliding or forcibly striking or dashing together; violent encounter of a moving body with another. 2a. The coming together of sounds with harsh effect. 3. fig. Encounter of opposed ideas, interests, etc. clashing, hostile encounter.” Whereas collusion means “Secret agreement...