W. Scott Howard
"oblique act": Susan Howe's Liberties
hereways
asquint
askew
Howe is a poet of reconfigurations and signal escapes; each of her volumes incorporates varying degrees of material adapted from past and future projects incisively collaged and elaborated anew. Each book is a multiplicity of helical asymptotes—“hereways / asquint / askew” (20)—and yet so radically singular, simultaneously eccentric and centric: “… only / fury / cleave / most / air / lovely / asymmetry / incline / light / lean …” (The Liberties, 68). All of Howe’s texts share affinities and echoes beyond anticipation or plan; and yet, each sequential poem destabilizes (thereby regenerating) that field of aleatory intersections that also includes each work’s paratextual materials, such as epigraphs, images, notes, covers, etc. The work escapes the works and vice versa on centrifugal and centripetal dimensions. Through such colliding phenomena, Howe’s factual telepathy transmits “heraldic puzzle[s]” of “prism pennant[s]” unsettling the “‘nature of the future’” (68). (Unless otherwise noted, page references in this essay follow the 1980 Loon text.)
These swerving characteristics are especially true for The Liberties, which has thus far appeared in four editions (Loon Books, 1980; Kulchur Foundation, 1983; Sun & Moon, 1990; New Directions, 2002) and in one French translation (Théâtre Typographique, 2013) that has not yet received critical attention from Howe’s readers in the U.S.A. (Another French translation is currently in-progress with Ypsilon Éditeur, which has also published Howe’s Mon Emily Dickinson (2017) and La marque de naissance (2019).) Through these vital adaptations, we witness Howe’s synergistic poetics and praxis engaging with her colleagues, editors, translators, book designers, visual artists, printers and publishers. This essay offers a preliminary study of Howe’s manifestations of The Liberties from 1980 to 2013, emphasizing the artist book from Théâtre Typographique, The Liberties—Pages Manquantes, which includes translations of Howe’s text by Bernard Rival, letterpress printing by Bénédicte Vilgrain, woodcuts by Stéphane Bordarier, image printing and book design by Michael Woolworth. The Liberties—Pages Manquantes was co-published by Woolworth and Théâtre Typographique with permission from New Directions.
Each of these five volumes is unique; even the NDP reprint of the Sun & Moon edition differs in a few significant ways concerning formatting, facing pages, paratexts, and covers. The Loon first edition is the basis for the Kulchur printing, but the latter text alters some of Howe’s strophic passages and facing-page sequences, does not include all of the 1980 paratextual materials, and represents different versions of David von Schlegell’s drawing(s), “crossing the ninth wave.” (In the Loon text, that sketch appears on a single page (19); in the Kulchur edition, more elaborate images appear on two pages, recto/verso (79 – 80). After the Kulchur volume, von Schlegell’s illustrations do not appear in any of the subsequent printings of The Liberties.) Amplifying these asymmetries in the Kulchur text, The Liberties is preceded therein by another sequential poem, Defenestration of Prague, that metonymically frames the whole book by that very title, which itself throws authority out the window: “For we are language Lost // in language / Wind sweeps over the wheat” (Kulchur, 19). In that regard, the Kulchur edition initiates a combination of Howe’s sequential works that Sun & Moon and NDP recapitulate, except that those subsequent volumes begin with two additional works: a prose poem, “THERE ARE NOT LEAVES ENOUGH TO CROWN TO COVER TO CROWN TO COVER”; and an assemblage, Pythagorean Silence, which first appeared as a book (Montemora, 1982). The Sun & Moon edition introduces a new title for the whole, The Europe of Trusts, which the NDP text recapitulates and with which The Liberties has become most readily associated. However, neither the Sun & Moon nor the NDP text represents the paratextual materials present in the Loon and Kulchur editions. The Sun & Moon volume emulates and diverges from the content and formatting in the Loon and Kulchur editions, while the NDP edition emulates and diverges from the Sun & Moon volume and differs most remarkably from the Loon text, which limns an inimitable line of flight: “crisscross // wild /// darker // swallow // ha / hue // wheel // flame // mum / mum” (70).
The Loon printing of The Liberties embodies many distinctive features specific to its DIY mode of production and proximity to Howe’s circle of family and friends. Howe includes in the book a cluster of brief acknowledgments concerning some of those details, such as: “Thanks to the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and Maureen Owen for the use of the mimeograph machine.” (Owen recalls their collaborative process of “running off the pages on the mighty and clunky Gestetner outside the Poetry Project office on the church balcony at St. Marks. Days of glorious mimeo!” (e-mail to Howard).) Howe’s acknowledgments also include: “for Susan Manning”; and “The stamp and ‘Susan Howe’ on the front COVER are from the envelope that carried a last letter to me, from my 83 year old [I]rish grandmother, Susan Manning.” As that latter note indicates, Howe dedicates The Liberties to her grandmother and in that spirit also includes (on the book’s front cover) facsimiles of the 8 pence Eire stamp and of Susan Manning’s handwritten “Susan Howe” from the letter’s envelope. Photocopied reproductions of the 8 pence stamp appear in the subsequent volumes from Kulchur, Sun & Moon, and NDP, but Howe’s grandmother’s handwriting may only be found on the Loon edition’s front cover. Numerous other details are specific to the Loon text, including: the mimeographed pages and stapled binding; the photograph on the front cover of von Schlegel’s boat on the lake (which Howe does not mention in her acknowledgments, except to say “COVER by Susan Howe”); von Schlegel’s drawing, “crossing the ninth wave” (19), noted by Howe; and two maps: the first, of Howth peninsula and Ireland’s Eye (72); the second, of Ireland’s Eye, appearing on the last page of the book, hand-stamped (in light blue ink in my copy). Howe’s acknowledgements do not mention the two maps, the first of which is specific to the Loon edition; photocopied reproductions of the hand-stamped image of Ireland’s Eye subsequently appear in the volumes from Kulchur, Sun & Moon, and NDP.
The 2013 artist book edition from Théâtre Typographique emulates the content and formatting from the Sun & Moon volume while adding several astonishing letterpress and multimedia elements that amplify Susan Howe’s “oblique act” (64) at the heart of The Liberties.
Howe’s multifarious singularities among these five contiguous editions of The Liberties engender a richly generative field of contingent intersections, rhizomes, and spirals that escape capture and conversion (in all senses of that word). Each volume of juxtaposed sequential works could be studied via mereology except that Howe’s colliding phenomena subvert transitive predications (Howard, Archive and Artifact, 12 – 13). Such ineluctable, innumerable echoes and elisions among kindred works are simultaneously definite and indefinite, autological and heterological, both/and as if neither/nor while yet & also whenas anon. This is the Howe paradox—“Bedevikke bedl / bedevilled by a printer’s error” (10)—that plays somewhere between the Grelling–Nelson paradox and Russell’s paradox. So deeply informed by swerving synergies, Howe’s wordscapes occupy charged figure-ground fields of action wherein language self-reflexively folds through and across, against and within itself in recombinant, vitalist-materialist “giggling[s] in a whistling wind / unbuttoned” (31).
The oblique act at the heart of The Liberties is that this work includes Howe’s only published play script to date, which emerges progressively within the context of the volume’s sub-sections: “T R A V E L S,” “T H E I R / Book of Stella,” “W H I T E F O O L S C A P / Book of Cordelia,” “G O D ’ S S P I E S,” the concluding act “3” and epilogue, “H E A R.” Howe’s play-within-a-poem presents a feminist revisioning of the legacies of Hester Johnson / Stella (life-long intimate companion of Jonathan Swift) and Cordelia (King Lear’s youngest daughter) both of whom were spurned by the men with whom they shared their deepest confidence and love. Howe’s abstract-minimalist, existentialist, embedded script (which becomes most overtly shaped as a theatrical text in “G O D ’ S S P I E S,” act “3,” and “H E A R”) rescues Stella and Cordelia from their narratives, turning those texts and contexts inside-out and against the grain, staging an oblique “force of the drama / farce of the drama” (80) that liberates both characters through their shared quest to remediate their respective betrayals: “how did we happen—because we were written” (58). Stella and Cordelia, both “in their early teens” (40) and dressed as boys, journey through the wilderness for seven days, witnessing changes in the landscape, consulting maps from Stella’s book, playing hopscotch, divining “invisible / inviolable” words “in a child’s voice” (56), and sharing stories about their lingering traumas and their mutual desire to be “at peace—pathless … Clinging close [coming] in couplets—conversing at landmarks. / Or [rising] to the surface at seamarks” (61). During pivotal scenes of reversal and reconciliation, Stella encounters Swift (on Friday at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin); and Cordelia, Lear (on Sunday in the wilderness).
While it is certainly true that all of Howe’s texts, installations, and soundscapes embody performative hybrid modes—dynamic syntheses of poetry and prose, history, music, visual art, sculpture, cinema, philosophy, and theatre—only in these acts and scenes in The Liberties do we witness delineated characters (Stella, Cordelia, The Ghost of Jonathan Swift, Lear), parts, settings, stage directions, and props (a knapsack, a shepherd’s crook, a white blindfold, white blackboard chalk, a pistol) plus specific notations on atmospheric changes (wind, moonlight, sunrise), offstage actions (gunshots, wild geese flying, choir singing), and special effects (such as, “The GHOST rises, crosses the stage to the pulpit, and walks through STELLA up the stairs to the sounding board” (52), heightening tensions in Stella’s reconciliation with Swift). Chance encounters with various birds (falcons, swifts, doves, wild geese, swans) spark turning points and transformations, such as this visionary moment (57 – 58) when Cordelia, blindfolded, discerns these signs:
CORDELIA
(Rising suddenly. Pointing to the sky.[)]
Wild geese fly over in the letter V
Yes. They are there. Reversed
they lead off the A’s
(Loud gunshot.) (Looking wildly around.)
A shot!
(Pause.) (Cry of wild geese flying over--
and away.)
Transfigured cries. The cries of souls transfigured.
Beating their wings—making great circles--
upward—evermore--free--
(Silence.)
A swan. White swans—seven.
(Pause).
Nothing.
(Pause.)
STELLA
(Vehemently.)
Do not leave me!
CORDELIA
According to my bond. As if nothing--
STELLA
(Gazing straight ahead.)
—has happened. Not to others. Only to us two.
CORDELIA
(Cries out.)
Nothing is our own!
This pivotal moment stages Cordelia’s confrontation with the existential core of her rebuke to her father—“Nothing, my lord”—which he redoubles—“Nothing will come of nothing” (26). Cordelia’s apophatic truth to power (“Nothing is our own!) breaks the litotic spell of “that Noone in first father—so soon a terror / of feathery wings” (58), thereby informing her reconciliation with Lear (58 – 59). In one striking instance (58) of Cordelia’s variable metrics (which appear as decasyllabic lines in the NDP text), Howe’s language emulates Shakespeare’s:
Come to the surface again true love, True.
(Pause.)
You with your cradlegrave cords. Nothing can estrange
the tattling deep of summer hummed in honeyed trees hmmm
—a hush of homing—homeward rush of exile--
flight—Liberty.
(Radiant.)
These vibrant, regenerative turning points (among other scintillating moments in these concluding pages to “G O D ’ S S P I E S”) bring Stella and Cordelia full circle in their shared quest for liberty, to be “at peace—pathless” (61). Their journey continues in act “3,” which scaffolds an abstract-minimalist ‘shadow’ theatre of their “say / nothing / verbatim / alarum / words” (71) through an astonishing sequence (63 – 83) of Howe’s poetic columns of quarried set designs, bewildering facing-page collage poems, enigmatic lists and apodictic riddles, polyvocal strophic assemblages, existential dialogues and dreamy lyrics—each and all energized by indwelling “splash / atomies / dare / tangle” of “poesie / sign / wave / 9” (82).
The Liberties begins with a prose preface, “FRAGMENTS OF A LIQUIDATION,” that introduces the perplexing histories of Hester Johnson (STELLA) and Rebecca Dingley who were each entangled in intimate relationships with Jonathan Swift during formative years in their lives. When Swift was living in London (1710 – 1713), “he wrote long letters to the women he had left behind at Laracor”; although addressed to both, Howe notes that “they were intended for Stella” (2). The letters were “written in diary form usually in bed at night or in the morning just after waking”; with occasional passages in cipher, Swift’s letters were brimming with “chat, puns, politics, plans, gossip, history, dreams, advice, endearments, secrets . . . . . . . . .” (2). “Why the two never married is a mystery” (5). Twenty-four of Swift’s letters survive and are known as The Journal to Stella, readily available today in a variety of print and electronic editions. None of Stella’s letters to Swift have survived.
Théâtre Typographique’s The Liberties—Pages Manquantes (25 x 26 cm, 56 pages, co-published by Michael Woolworth) is a limited-edition artist book of 50 copies, each signed by Susan Howe and Stéphane Bordarier. The volume’s Garamond type was set by Bernard Rival and the letterpress pages were printed in Étais by Bénédicte Vilgrain on Rivoli 120 g. paper in October of 2013. The covers were printed by Woolworth, Rival, and Vilgrain, and the books were bound in Paris by Reliure Houdart. The volume’s text of The Liberties includes Rival’s deft translations of “FRAGMENTS OF A LIQUIDATION,” act “3,” and “H E A R,” thereby omitting “T R A V E L S,” “T H E I R / Book of Stella,” “W H I T E F O O L S C A P / Book of Cordelia,” and “G O D ’ S S P I E S” in order to heighten the existentialist “oblique act” / “act oblique” of the work’s concluding passages. Bordarier’s imbricated diptychs of woodcuts (printed in Paris by Woolworth and Marc Moyano on Johannot 125 g. vellum) appear, respectively, between Howe’s preface and act “3” (red/purple, purple/red) and after act “3” (yellow/green, green/yellow):
"oblique act": Susan Howe's Liberties
hereways
asquint
askew
Howe is a poet of reconfigurations and signal escapes; each of her volumes incorporates varying degrees of material adapted from past and future projects incisively collaged and elaborated anew. Each book is a multiplicity of helical asymptotes—“hereways / asquint / askew” (20)—and yet so radically singular, simultaneously eccentric and centric: “… only / fury / cleave / most / air / lovely / asymmetry / incline / light / lean …” (The Liberties, 68). All of Howe’s texts share affinities and echoes beyond anticipation or plan; and yet, each sequential poem destabilizes (thereby regenerating) that field of aleatory intersections that also includes each work’s paratextual materials, such as epigraphs, images, notes, covers, etc. The work escapes the works and vice versa on centrifugal and centripetal dimensions. Through such colliding phenomena, Howe’s factual telepathy transmits “heraldic puzzle[s]” of “prism pennant[s]” unsettling the “‘nature of the future’” (68). (Unless otherwise noted, page references in this essay follow the 1980 Loon text.)
These swerving characteristics are especially true for The Liberties, which has thus far appeared in four editions (Loon Books, 1980; Kulchur Foundation, 1983; Sun & Moon, 1990; New Directions, 2002) and in one French translation (Théâtre Typographique, 2013) that has not yet received critical attention from Howe’s readers in the U.S.A. (Another French translation is currently in-progress with Ypsilon Éditeur, which has also published Howe’s Mon Emily Dickinson (2017) and La marque de naissance (2019).) Through these vital adaptations, we witness Howe’s synergistic poetics and praxis engaging with her colleagues, editors, translators, book designers, visual artists, printers and publishers. This essay offers a preliminary study of Howe’s manifestations of The Liberties from 1980 to 2013, emphasizing the artist book from Théâtre Typographique, The Liberties—Pages Manquantes, which includes translations of Howe’s text by Bernard Rival, letterpress printing by Bénédicte Vilgrain, woodcuts by Stéphane Bordarier, image printing and book design by Michael Woolworth. The Liberties—Pages Manquantes was co-published by Woolworth and Théâtre Typographique with permission from New Directions.
Each of these five volumes is unique; even the NDP reprint of the Sun & Moon edition differs in a few significant ways concerning formatting, facing pages, paratexts, and covers. The Loon first edition is the basis for the Kulchur printing, but the latter text alters some of Howe’s strophic passages and facing-page sequences, does not include all of the 1980 paratextual materials, and represents different versions of David von Schlegell’s drawing(s), “crossing the ninth wave.” (In the Loon text, that sketch appears on a single page (19); in the Kulchur edition, more elaborate images appear on two pages, recto/verso (79 – 80). After the Kulchur volume, von Schlegell’s illustrations do not appear in any of the subsequent printings of The Liberties.) Amplifying these asymmetries in the Kulchur text, The Liberties is preceded therein by another sequential poem, Defenestration of Prague, that metonymically frames the whole book by that very title, which itself throws authority out the window: “For we are language Lost // in language / Wind sweeps over the wheat” (Kulchur, 19). In that regard, the Kulchur edition initiates a combination of Howe’s sequential works that Sun & Moon and NDP recapitulate, except that those subsequent volumes begin with two additional works: a prose poem, “THERE ARE NOT LEAVES ENOUGH TO CROWN TO COVER TO CROWN TO COVER”; and an assemblage, Pythagorean Silence, which first appeared as a book (Montemora, 1982). The Sun & Moon edition introduces a new title for the whole, The Europe of Trusts, which the NDP text recapitulates and with which The Liberties has become most readily associated. However, neither the Sun & Moon nor the NDP text represents the paratextual materials present in the Loon and Kulchur editions. The Sun & Moon volume emulates and diverges from the content and formatting in the Loon and Kulchur editions, while the NDP edition emulates and diverges from the Sun & Moon volume and differs most remarkably from the Loon text, which limns an inimitable line of flight: “crisscross // wild /// darker // swallow // ha / hue // wheel // flame // mum / mum” (70).
The Loon printing of The Liberties embodies many distinctive features specific to its DIY mode of production and proximity to Howe’s circle of family and friends. Howe includes in the book a cluster of brief acknowledgments concerning some of those details, such as: “Thanks to the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and Maureen Owen for the use of the mimeograph machine.” (Owen recalls their collaborative process of “running off the pages on the mighty and clunky Gestetner outside the Poetry Project office on the church balcony at St. Marks. Days of glorious mimeo!” (e-mail to Howard).) Howe’s acknowledgments also include: “for Susan Manning”; and “The stamp and ‘Susan Howe’ on the front COVER are from the envelope that carried a last letter to me, from my 83 year old [I]rish grandmother, Susan Manning.” As that latter note indicates, Howe dedicates The Liberties to her grandmother and in that spirit also includes (on the book’s front cover) facsimiles of the 8 pence Eire stamp and of Susan Manning’s handwritten “Susan Howe” from the letter’s envelope. Photocopied reproductions of the 8 pence stamp appear in the subsequent volumes from Kulchur, Sun & Moon, and NDP, but Howe’s grandmother’s handwriting may only be found on the Loon edition’s front cover. Numerous other details are specific to the Loon text, including: the mimeographed pages and stapled binding; the photograph on the front cover of von Schlegel’s boat on the lake (which Howe does not mention in her acknowledgments, except to say “COVER by Susan Howe”); von Schlegel’s drawing, “crossing the ninth wave” (19), noted by Howe; and two maps: the first, of Howth peninsula and Ireland’s Eye (72); the second, of Ireland’s Eye, appearing on the last page of the book, hand-stamped (in light blue ink in my copy). Howe’s acknowledgements do not mention the two maps, the first of which is specific to the Loon edition; photocopied reproductions of the hand-stamped image of Ireland’s Eye subsequently appear in the volumes from Kulchur, Sun & Moon, and NDP.
The 2013 artist book edition from Théâtre Typographique emulates the content and formatting from the Sun & Moon volume while adding several astonishing letterpress and multimedia elements that amplify Susan Howe’s “oblique act” (64) at the heart of The Liberties.
Howe’s multifarious singularities among these five contiguous editions of The Liberties engender a richly generative field of contingent intersections, rhizomes, and spirals that escape capture and conversion (in all senses of that word). Each volume of juxtaposed sequential works could be studied via mereology except that Howe’s colliding phenomena subvert transitive predications (Howard, Archive and Artifact, 12 – 13). Such ineluctable, innumerable echoes and elisions among kindred works are simultaneously definite and indefinite, autological and heterological, both/and as if neither/nor while yet & also whenas anon. This is the Howe paradox—“Bedevikke bedl / bedevilled by a printer’s error” (10)—that plays somewhere between the Grelling–Nelson paradox and Russell’s paradox. So deeply informed by swerving synergies, Howe’s wordscapes occupy charged figure-ground fields of action wherein language self-reflexively folds through and across, against and within itself in recombinant, vitalist-materialist “giggling[s] in a whistling wind / unbuttoned” (31).
The oblique act at the heart of The Liberties is that this work includes Howe’s only published play script to date, which emerges progressively within the context of the volume’s sub-sections: “T R A V E L S,” “T H E I R / Book of Stella,” “W H I T E F O O L S C A P / Book of Cordelia,” “G O D ’ S S P I E S,” the concluding act “3” and epilogue, “H E A R.” Howe’s play-within-a-poem presents a feminist revisioning of the legacies of Hester Johnson / Stella (life-long intimate companion of Jonathan Swift) and Cordelia (King Lear’s youngest daughter) both of whom were spurned by the men with whom they shared their deepest confidence and love. Howe’s abstract-minimalist, existentialist, embedded script (which becomes most overtly shaped as a theatrical text in “G O D ’ S S P I E S,” act “3,” and “H E A R”) rescues Stella and Cordelia from their narratives, turning those texts and contexts inside-out and against the grain, staging an oblique “force of the drama / farce of the drama” (80) that liberates both characters through their shared quest to remediate their respective betrayals: “how did we happen—because we were written” (58). Stella and Cordelia, both “in their early teens” (40) and dressed as boys, journey through the wilderness for seven days, witnessing changes in the landscape, consulting maps from Stella’s book, playing hopscotch, divining “invisible / inviolable” words “in a child’s voice” (56), and sharing stories about their lingering traumas and their mutual desire to be “at peace—pathless … Clinging close [coming] in couplets—conversing at landmarks. / Or [rising] to the surface at seamarks” (61). During pivotal scenes of reversal and reconciliation, Stella encounters Swift (on Friday at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin); and Cordelia, Lear (on Sunday in the wilderness).
While it is certainly true that all of Howe’s texts, installations, and soundscapes embody performative hybrid modes—dynamic syntheses of poetry and prose, history, music, visual art, sculpture, cinema, philosophy, and theatre—only in these acts and scenes in The Liberties do we witness delineated characters (Stella, Cordelia, The Ghost of Jonathan Swift, Lear), parts, settings, stage directions, and props (a knapsack, a shepherd’s crook, a white blindfold, white blackboard chalk, a pistol) plus specific notations on atmospheric changes (wind, moonlight, sunrise), offstage actions (gunshots, wild geese flying, choir singing), and special effects (such as, “The GHOST rises, crosses the stage to the pulpit, and walks through STELLA up the stairs to the sounding board” (52), heightening tensions in Stella’s reconciliation with Swift). Chance encounters with various birds (falcons, swifts, doves, wild geese, swans) spark turning points and transformations, such as this visionary moment (57 – 58) when Cordelia, blindfolded, discerns these signs:
CORDELIA
(Rising suddenly. Pointing to the sky.[)]
Wild geese fly over in the letter V
Yes. They are there. Reversed
they lead off the A’s
(Loud gunshot.) (Looking wildly around.)
A shot!
(Pause.) (Cry of wild geese flying over--
and away.)
Transfigured cries. The cries of souls transfigured.
Beating their wings—making great circles--
upward—evermore--free--
(Silence.)
A swan. White swans—seven.
(Pause).
Nothing.
(Pause.)
STELLA
(Vehemently.)
Do not leave me!
CORDELIA
According to my bond. As if nothing--
STELLA
(Gazing straight ahead.)
—has happened. Not to others. Only to us two.
CORDELIA
(Cries out.)
Nothing is our own!
This pivotal moment stages Cordelia’s confrontation with the existential core of her rebuke to her father—“Nothing, my lord”—which he redoubles—“Nothing will come of nothing” (26). Cordelia’s apophatic truth to power (“Nothing is our own!) breaks the litotic spell of “that Noone in first father—so soon a terror / of feathery wings” (58), thereby informing her reconciliation with Lear (58 – 59). In one striking instance (58) of Cordelia’s variable metrics (which appear as decasyllabic lines in the NDP text), Howe’s language emulates Shakespeare’s:
Come to the surface again true love, True.
(Pause.)
You with your cradlegrave cords. Nothing can estrange
the tattling deep of summer hummed in honeyed trees hmmm
—a hush of homing—homeward rush of exile--
flight—Liberty.
(Radiant.)
These vibrant, regenerative turning points (among other scintillating moments in these concluding pages to “G O D ’ S S P I E S”) bring Stella and Cordelia full circle in their shared quest for liberty, to be “at peace—pathless” (61). Their journey continues in act “3,” which scaffolds an abstract-minimalist ‘shadow’ theatre of their “say / nothing / verbatim / alarum / words” (71) through an astonishing sequence (63 – 83) of Howe’s poetic columns of quarried set designs, bewildering facing-page collage poems, enigmatic lists and apodictic riddles, polyvocal strophic assemblages, existential dialogues and dreamy lyrics—each and all energized by indwelling “splash / atomies / dare / tangle” of “poesie / sign / wave / 9” (82).
The Liberties begins with a prose preface, “FRAGMENTS OF A LIQUIDATION,” that introduces the perplexing histories of Hester Johnson (STELLA) and Rebecca Dingley who were each entangled in intimate relationships with Jonathan Swift during formative years in their lives. When Swift was living in London (1710 – 1713), “he wrote long letters to the women he had left behind at Laracor”; although addressed to both, Howe notes that “they were intended for Stella” (2). The letters were “written in diary form usually in bed at night or in the morning just after waking”; with occasional passages in cipher, Swift’s letters were brimming with “chat, puns, politics, plans, gossip, history, dreams, advice, endearments, secrets . . . . . . . . .” (2). “Why the two never married is a mystery” (5). Twenty-four of Swift’s letters survive and are known as The Journal to Stella, readily available today in a variety of print and electronic editions. None of Stella’s letters to Swift have survived.
Théâtre Typographique’s The Liberties—Pages Manquantes (25 x 26 cm, 56 pages, co-published by Michael Woolworth) is a limited-edition artist book of 50 copies, each signed by Susan Howe and Stéphane Bordarier. The volume’s Garamond type was set by Bernard Rival and the letterpress pages were printed in Étais by Bénédicte Vilgrain on Rivoli 120 g. paper in October of 2013. The covers were printed by Woolworth, Rival, and Vilgrain, and the books were bound in Paris by Reliure Houdart. The volume’s text of The Liberties includes Rival’s deft translations of “FRAGMENTS OF A LIQUIDATION,” act “3,” and “H E A R,” thereby omitting “T R A V E L S,” “T H E I R / Book of Stella,” “W H I T E F O O L S C A P / Book of Cordelia,” and “G O D ’ S S P I E S” in order to heighten the existentialist “oblique act” / “act oblique” of the work’s concluding passages. Bordarier’s imbricated diptychs of woodcuts (printed in Paris by Woolworth and Marc Moyano on Johannot 125 g. vellum) appear, respectively, between Howe’s preface and act “3” (red/purple, purple/red) and after act “3” (yellow/green, green/yellow):
Bordarier’s eight prints thus occupy the missing pages / pages manquantes from Howe’s volume while also invoking the absent presence of Stella’s lost letters via the co-presence of Stella’s book of “charts, fold-out maps, alphabets, and pictures” (40). Following Rival’s translation of Howe’s preface, “FRAGMENTS D’UNE LIQUIDATION,” Bordarier’s monochromes (like bolts of fabric) emulate and amplify the spirit of Howe’s abstract-minimalist columns of quarried stone for the mise-en-scène of act “3”:
(WHITE MARBLE) leaf frame shadow leaf
rosette lip hour seven equinox shallow line ceiling broken
(GREY STONE) cyma act oblique act third sacra (WHITE MARBLE) grid . . . (Loon, 64)
* * *
(MARBRE BLANC) feuille bâti ombre feuille
rosette lèvre heure sept équinoxe peu-profond ligne plafond
brisé
(PIERRE GRISE) cyma acte oblique acte troisième sacra
(MARBRE BLANC) grille … (TH.TY.)
This unique collaboration among Howe, Rival, Vilgrain, Woolworth, and Bordarier emerged naturally from their previous projects. Rival and Vilgrain, who manage Théâtre Typographique, have produced four other translated volumes of Howe’s work: Marginalia de Melville (1997); Deux et (1998), which includes two essays, “Bâtis” (i.e. “Frame Structures”) and “Triage des faits” (“Sorting Facts”); Thorow (2002), which also includes Héliopathie; and “Cette île est la mienne” (2004), which includes two essays, “Submarginalia” and “La Captivité et Recouverance de Mme Mary Rowlandson.” (Howe’s juxtaposed wordscapes resonate deeply with Rival and Vilgrain. The name of their press, Théâtre Typographique, was inspired by Jacques Pimpaneau’s collection of Chinese ‘shadow’ dolls and by his puppet theatre performances. For Rival and Vilgrain, the figure-ground dynamics in Howe’s collage poems cast a similar spell.) Rival and Woolworth are old friends and had been talking for many years about co-publishing an artist book. Woolworth and Bordarier often work together at Woolworth’s gallery in Paris. Rival and Woolworth were both initially drawn to this particular book of Howe’s by her stories of walking with her mother through the centuries-old Dublin neighborhood, The Liberties, which Woolworth and Rival have visited. In her commentary that accompanies The Liberties—Pages Manquantes, Vilgrain provides some context: “‘The Liberties’ is the name of a popular area of Dublin, south of the Liffey, between the old Guinness Brewery and St. Patrick’s Cathedral of which Swift was the Dean. Susan Howe (b.1937) walked there as a child with her mother, Mary Manning, Irish, actress and playwright.”
Woolworth reflects that their adventure with The Liberties—Pages Manquantes “started from a desire to unite forces between two publishing and printing entities. There was talk about it for some time. The agreement was that each brought its specialty. TH.TY., the literature, so to speak, and its typographical mastery in print, and myself, the visual part” (e-mail to Howard). Rival thought that “the shape of the poems” (in “3” and “H E A R”) “seemed to be possibly right to go with Stéphane’s style of work” (e-mail to Howard), so they asked Bordarier to consider how his woodcuts might contribute to the architecture of the book. The Pages Manquantes sub-title occurred to Rival when he perceived the synergy between Bordarier’s monochromes and Howe’s sculptural mise-en-scène, as if “all that was actually missing” would give “some additional light to Stéphane’s mute work.” (In her commentary, Vilgrain appreciates the chance resonances among Howe’s minimalisms in “3” and “H E A R”; the increasing abstractions—from the Loon to the Kulchur to the Sun & Moon and NDP editions—of the remediated, ghostly presence of the 8 pence rectangular stamp bearing the effigy of Eire and of the engraved stamp of Ireland’s Eye; and “the possibility of progressive abstraction within the framework achieved by Stéphane Bordarier's colors.”)
The proportions of Bordarier's woodcuts influenced a sequence of further considerations for the volume’s overall design, typography, and how Rival and Vilgrain would emulate the Sun and Moon edition (their copytext). Given the necessary dimensions for the book (25 x 26 cm), Rival and Vilgrain chose Garamond 14, “the smallest of the large bodies, the largest of the small ones”; and for the capitals “(for example, the poem ‘WHITE MARBLE’): we lacked some, [so] we used 12 body capitals, it was necessary to establish small ‘bridges’ at the top and bottom of the letters so that the lines [would] hold” (e-mail to Howard):
(WHITE MARBLE) leaf frame shadow leaf
rosette lip hour seven equinox shallow line ceiling broken
(GREY STONE) cyma act oblique act third sacra (WHITE MARBLE) grid . . . (Loon, 64)
* * *
(MARBRE BLANC) feuille bâti ombre feuille
rosette lèvre heure sept équinoxe peu-profond ligne plafond
brisé
(PIERRE GRISE) cyma acte oblique acte troisième sacra
(MARBRE BLANC) grille … (TH.TY.)
This unique collaboration among Howe, Rival, Vilgrain, Woolworth, and Bordarier emerged naturally from their previous projects. Rival and Vilgrain, who manage Théâtre Typographique, have produced four other translated volumes of Howe’s work: Marginalia de Melville (1997); Deux et (1998), which includes two essays, “Bâtis” (i.e. “Frame Structures”) and “Triage des faits” (“Sorting Facts”); Thorow (2002), which also includes Héliopathie; and “Cette île est la mienne” (2004), which includes two essays, “Submarginalia” and “La Captivité et Recouverance de Mme Mary Rowlandson.” (Howe’s juxtaposed wordscapes resonate deeply with Rival and Vilgrain. The name of their press, Théâtre Typographique, was inspired by Jacques Pimpaneau’s collection of Chinese ‘shadow’ dolls and by his puppet theatre performances. For Rival and Vilgrain, the figure-ground dynamics in Howe’s collage poems cast a similar spell.) Rival and Woolworth are old friends and had been talking for many years about co-publishing an artist book. Woolworth and Bordarier often work together at Woolworth’s gallery in Paris. Rival and Woolworth were both initially drawn to this particular book of Howe’s by her stories of walking with her mother through the centuries-old Dublin neighborhood, The Liberties, which Woolworth and Rival have visited. In her commentary that accompanies The Liberties—Pages Manquantes, Vilgrain provides some context: “‘The Liberties’ is the name of a popular area of Dublin, south of the Liffey, between the old Guinness Brewery and St. Patrick’s Cathedral of which Swift was the Dean. Susan Howe (b.1937) walked there as a child with her mother, Mary Manning, Irish, actress and playwright.”
Woolworth reflects that their adventure with The Liberties—Pages Manquantes “started from a desire to unite forces between two publishing and printing entities. There was talk about it for some time. The agreement was that each brought its specialty. TH.TY., the literature, so to speak, and its typographical mastery in print, and myself, the visual part” (e-mail to Howard). Rival thought that “the shape of the poems” (in “3” and “H E A R”) “seemed to be possibly right to go with Stéphane’s style of work” (e-mail to Howard), so they asked Bordarier to consider how his woodcuts might contribute to the architecture of the book. The Pages Manquantes sub-title occurred to Rival when he perceived the synergy between Bordarier’s monochromes and Howe’s sculptural mise-en-scène, as if “all that was actually missing” would give “some additional light to Stéphane’s mute work.” (In her commentary, Vilgrain appreciates the chance resonances among Howe’s minimalisms in “3” and “H E A R”; the increasing abstractions—from the Loon to the Kulchur to the Sun & Moon and NDP editions—of the remediated, ghostly presence of the 8 pence rectangular stamp bearing the effigy of Eire and of the engraved stamp of Ireland’s Eye; and “the possibility of progressive abstraction within the framework achieved by Stéphane Bordarier's colors.”)
The proportions of Bordarier's woodcuts influenced a sequence of further considerations for the volume’s overall design, typography, and how Rival and Vilgrain would emulate the Sun and Moon edition (their copytext). Given the necessary dimensions for the book (25 x 26 cm), Rival and Vilgrain chose Garamond 14, “the smallest of the large bodies, the largest of the small ones”; and for the capitals “(for example, the poem ‘WHITE MARBLE’): we lacked some, [so] we used 12 body capitals, it was necessary to establish small ‘bridges’ at the top and bottom of the letters so that the lines [would] hold” (e-mail to Howard):
Rival and Vilgrain have produced an elegant text that precisely follows the Sun & Moon volume’s content and formatting of “FRAGMENTS OF A LIQUIDATION,” act “3,” and “H E A R” from Howe’s The Liberties. Their TH.TY. text therefore also emulates and diverges from the Loon, Kulchur, and NDP editions in several discrete instances. For example, on pages 210 – 211 in the Sun & Moon volume, two of Howe’s lines appear on the bottom right of 210—“We are / in a sandheap”—below twenty lines of poetry at the top left of that page, while six other lines that accompany the two at the bottom of 210 appear on the top of 211—“We are / discovered // not solid // the floor // based // on misunderstanding.” In the Loon and NDP editions, all eight of those lines (beginning with “We are / in a sandheap”) appear together in one strophic unit (respectively on pages 75 and 211). In the Kulchur text, those eight lines appear together on the bottom half of page 120, which also includes the other twenty lines of text at the top of that page (as in the Sun & Moon edition). These are only a few of the many differences in content and formatting among these five volumes. Given the importance of facing pages in Howe’s books, such multifarious variables among minute particulars engender infinitely swerving interpretations: “Nous sommes / dans un tas de sable /// Nous sommes / découverts // non solide // le plancher // repose / sur le malentendu.”
Among the five translations of Howe’s works published thus far by Théâtre Typographique, The Liberties—Pages Manquantes is the only artist book and, as such, is the most richly collaborative of those volumes. Between 2011 and 2013, Howe corresponded with Rival and Vilgrain as work on the book progressed. Of course, there were a few questions about certain words (such as “bolt”) which Howe addressed: “Line 5 the word ‘bolt’ in English means its opposite—to bolt away from something and to bolt (lock) a door. Also a bolt of lightning. Is there a chance of keeping the English word there rather than ‘foudre’?” (e-mail from Howe to Rival and Vilgrain). The Liberties—Pages Manquantes (2013) embodies the collaborative, multimedia, public-facing spirit of Howe’s gallery installation of TOM TIT TOT at Yale Union in Portland, Oregon (2013) and of her live performances and studio recordings with David Grubbs of WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER (2015). Within the context of Howe’s recent artist books, The Liberties—Pages Manquantes precedes TOM TIT TOT (MoMA, 2014) and Concordance (Grenfell, 2019). In comparison with the kaleidoscopic “concrete poems resembling textiles or wordwhorls” in TOM TIT TOT and the “canopy of broken sonic slivers” in Concordance, this vibrant limited-edition artist book from Théâtre Typographique stages a compelling oblique act / act oblique that will provoke renewed interest in all of Howe’s editions of The Liberties as well as in future adaptations and performances of the work’s immanent / imminent “splash / atomies / dare / tangle” of “poesie / sign / wave / 9”:
Among the five translations of Howe’s works published thus far by Théâtre Typographique, The Liberties—Pages Manquantes is the only artist book and, as such, is the most richly collaborative of those volumes. Between 2011 and 2013, Howe corresponded with Rival and Vilgrain as work on the book progressed. Of course, there were a few questions about certain words (such as “bolt”) which Howe addressed: “Line 5 the word ‘bolt’ in English means its opposite—to bolt away from something and to bolt (lock) a door. Also a bolt of lightning. Is there a chance of keeping the English word there rather than ‘foudre’?” (e-mail from Howe to Rival and Vilgrain). The Liberties—Pages Manquantes (2013) embodies the collaborative, multimedia, public-facing spirit of Howe’s gallery installation of TOM TIT TOT at Yale Union in Portland, Oregon (2013) and of her live performances and studio recordings with David Grubbs of WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER (2015). Within the context of Howe’s recent artist books, The Liberties—Pages Manquantes precedes TOM TIT TOT (MoMA, 2014) and Concordance (Grenfell, 2019). In comparison with the kaleidoscopic “concrete poems resembling textiles or wordwhorls” in TOM TIT TOT and the “canopy of broken sonic slivers” in Concordance, this vibrant limited-edition artist book from Théâtre Typographique stages a compelling oblique act / act oblique that will provoke renewed interest in all of Howe’s editions of The Liberties as well as in future adaptations and performances of the work’s immanent / imminent “splash / atomies / dare / tangle” of “poesie / sign / wave / 9”:
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Acknowledgments: Deepest thanks to Susan Howe, Maureen Owen, Bernard Rival, Bénédicte Vilgrain, and Michael Woolworth for their generous permission to include quotations and images from The Loon Books printing of The Liberties, from the Kulchur Foundation edition, from e-mail correspondence and web essays, and from Théâtre Typographique’s The Liberties—Pages Manquantes, including images of Stéphane Bordarier’s monochromes. The Defenestration of Prague and The Liberties by Susan Howe, from EUROPE OF TRUSTS, copyright ©1990 by Susan Howe. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Bibliography:
Howard, W. Scott. E-mail correspondence with Susan Howe (January 2021).
---. E-mail correspondence with Maureen Owen (January 2021).
---. E-mail correspondence with Bernard Rival (January 2020 – December 2020).
---. E-mail correspondence with Bénédicte Vilgrain (May 2020 – December 2020).
---. E-mail correspondence with Michael Woolworth (December 2020).
---. “Broken Slivers: Susan Howe’s Concordance.” Special Collections Showcase. University Libraries, University of Denver (July 13, 2020):
https://dulibraries.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/broken-slivers-susan-howes-concordance/
---. Archive and Artifact: Susan Howe’s Factual Telepathy. Northfield, MA: Talisman House Publishers, 2019.
---. “‘TANGIBLE THINGS / Out of a stark oblivion’: Spellbinding TOM TIT TOT.” Special Collections Showcase. University Libraries, University of Denver (August 5, 2015):
https://dulibraries.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/tangible-things-out-of-a-stark-oblivion-spellbinding-tom-tit-tot/
Howe, Susan. Concordance. New York: The Grenfell Press, 2019.
---. La marque de naissance. Trans. Antoine Cazé. Paris: Ypsilon Éditeur, 2019.
---. Mon Emily Dickinson. Trans. Antoine Cazé. Paris: Ypsilon Éditeur, 2017.
---. TOM TIT TOT. Portland, OR: Yale Union (October 5 – December 1, 2013): http://yaleunion.org/susan-howe/
---. “Submarginalia” et “La Captivité et Recouverance de Mme Mary Rowlandson.” “Cette île est la mienne.” Trans. Bernard Rival. Courbevoie:
Théâtre Typographique, 2004. 31 – 49; 117 – 121.
---. The Europe of Trusts. New York: New Directions, 2002.
---. Thorow. Trans. Bernard Rival. Courbevoie: Théâtre Typographique, 2002.
---. Deux et. Trans. Bénédicte Vilgrain et Bernard Rival. Courbevoie: Théâtre Typographique, 1998.
---. Marginalia de Melville. Trans. Bernard Rival. Courbevoie: Théâtre Typographique, 1997.
---. The Europe of Trusts. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1990.
---. The Defenestration of Prague. New York: The Kulchur Foundation, 1983.
---. Pythagorean Silence. New York: The Montemora Foundation, 1982.
---. The Liberties. Guilford: Loon Books, 1980.
Howe, Susan, and David Grubbs. WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER. CD. Chicago: Blue Chopsticks, 2015.
---. WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER. Brooklyn, NY: Issue Project Room (October 25, 2013): https://vimeo.com/138668754
Howe, Susan, and R. H. Quaytman. TOM TIT TOT. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014.
Howe, Susan, and Stéphane Bordarier. The Liberties—Pages Manquantes. Trans. Bernard Rival. Étais: Théâtre Typographique, 2013.
Rival, Bernard. E-mail correspondence with Susan Howe (July 23 and July 31, 2012).
Vilgrain, Bénédicte. “Susan Howe, «The Liberties». Stéphane Bordarier, «Pages manquantes»”: https://www.thty.fr/extrait/602
Bibliography:
Howard, W. Scott. E-mail correspondence with Susan Howe (January 2021).
---. E-mail correspondence with Maureen Owen (January 2021).
---. E-mail correspondence with Bernard Rival (January 2020 – December 2020).
---. E-mail correspondence with Bénédicte Vilgrain (May 2020 – December 2020).
---. E-mail correspondence with Michael Woolworth (December 2020).
---. “Broken Slivers: Susan Howe’s Concordance.” Special Collections Showcase. University Libraries, University of Denver (July 13, 2020):
https://dulibraries.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/broken-slivers-susan-howes-concordance/
---. Archive and Artifact: Susan Howe’s Factual Telepathy. Northfield, MA: Talisman House Publishers, 2019.
---. “‘TANGIBLE THINGS / Out of a stark oblivion’: Spellbinding TOM TIT TOT.” Special Collections Showcase. University Libraries, University of Denver (August 5, 2015):
https://dulibraries.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/tangible-things-out-of-a-stark-oblivion-spellbinding-tom-tit-tot/
Howe, Susan. Concordance. New York: The Grenfell Press, 2019.
---. La marque de naissance. Trans. Antoine Cazé. Paris: Ypsilon Éditeur, 2019.
---. Mon Emily Dickinson. Trans. Antoine Cazé. Paris: Ypsilon Éditeur, 2017.
---. TOM TIT TOT. Portland, OR: Yale Union (October 5 – December 1, 2013): http://yaleunion.org/susan-howe/
---. “Submarginalia” et “La Captivité et Recouverance de Mme Mary Rowlandson.” “Cette île est la mienne.” Trans. Bernard Rival. Courbevoie:
Théâtre Typographique, 2004. 31 – 49; 117 – 121.
---. The Europe of Trusts. New York: New Directions, 2002.
---. Thorow. Trans. Bernard Rival. Courbevoie: Théâtre Typographique, 2002.
---. Deux et. Trans. Bénédicte Vilgrain et Bernard Rival. Courbevoie: Théâtre Typographique, 1998.
---. Marginalia de Melville. Trans. Bernard Rival. Courbevoie: Théâtre Typographique, 1997.
---. The Europe of Trusts. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1990.
---. The Defenestration of Prague. New York: The Kulchur Foundation, 1983.
---. Pythagorean Silence. New York: The Montemora Foundation, 1982.
---. The Liberties. Guilford: Loon Books, 1980.
Howe, Susan, and David Grubbs. WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER. CD. Chicago: Blue Chopsticks, 2015.
---. WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER. Brooklyn, NY: Issue Project Room (October 25, 2013): https://vimeo.com/138668754
Howe, Susan, and R. H. Quaytman. TOM TIT TOT. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014.
Howe, Susan, and Stéphane Bordarier. The Liberties—Pages Manquantes. Trans. Bernard Rival. Étais: Théâtre Typographique, 2013.
Rival, Bernard. E-mail correspondence with Susan Howe (July 23 and July 31, 2012).
Vilgrain, Bénédicte. “Susan Howe, «The Liberties». Stéphane Bordarier, «Pages manquantes»”: https://www.thty.fr/extrait/602