Event Registration
Fanny Howe Feminist Reading Group; A five-session reading group with Laura Henriksen
Admission
- $150.00
Location
The Rectory
232 East 11th St
New York, NY 10003
Room Number: Basement
232 East 11th St
New York, NY 10003
Room Number: Basement
Summary
Dates & Time: Sundays, July 19-Aug 16, 2-4pm ET, in -person
On the final page of Fanny Howe’s final book, she asks:
World of wretches and the exploited
Of the accidentally destroyed
The strike of each heart
In the distant body
Ups the odds that there’s a God but why?
Perhaps this question, both theological and political, can’t be answered so much as approached, with skepticism and reverence. Reverence for the wretches and the exploited, identical to reverence for the possibility of there being a God. Skepticism as a function of doubt, doubt being, as Howe explains elsewhere “what allows / a single gesture / to have a heart.”
Across her poems, essays, and novels, Fanny Howe is rigorous and mystifying, pathetic and ecstatic, Boston Irish, Catholic, totally committed to solidarity with the world’s marginalized and dispossessed. I think more than towards God, her attention remained always fixed on the brilliance and dignity of children, and on what would make possible a world where children can be free.
In this feminist reading group, we will ask her questions with her—of faith and divinity, of suffering and transcendence, of family and history, of radical love. New readers and Howe heads both welcome. We will begin with This Poor Book, and make our way around O’Clock, Night Philosophy, What Did I Do Wrong?, and probably Indivisible, with potential excursions to follow our collective desires.
Access information: The meeting room is in the basement of the Rectory. Access involves one flight of stairs up from street level (with a handrail; no elevator), followed by a second flight of stairs to the basement.
On the final page of Fanny Howe’s final book, she asks:
World of wretches and the exploited
Of the accidentally destroyed
The strike of each heart
In the distant body
Ups the odds that there’s a God but why?
Perhaps this question, both theological and political, can’t be answered so much as approached, with skepticism and reverence. Reverence for the wretches and the exploited, identical to reverence for the possibility of there being a God. Skepticism as a function of doubt, doubt being, as Howe explains elsewhere “what allows / a single gesture / to have a heart.”
Across her poems, essays, and novels, Fanny Howe is rigorous and mystifying, pathetic and ecstatic, Boston Irish, Catholic, totally committed to solidarity with the world’s marginalized and dispossessed. I think more than towards God, her attention remained always fixed on the brilliance and dignity of children, and on what would make possible a world where children can be free.
In this feminist reading group, we will ask her questions with her—of faith and divinity, of suffering and transcendence, of family and history, of radical love. New readers and Howe heads both welcome. We will begin with This Poor Book, and make our way around O’Clock, Night Philosophy, What Did I Do Wrong?, and probably Indivisible, with potential excursions to follow our collective desires.
Access information: The meeting room is in the basement of the Rectory. Access involves one flight of stairs up from street level (with a handrail; no elevator), followed by a second flight of stairs to the basement.
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