A 'familiar' poetic outlook

“If someone is alone reading my poems, I hope it would be like reading someone's notebook. A record. Of a place, beauty, difficulty. A familiar daily struggle.” – Fanny Howe

Poet, novelist, and short story writer, Howe (who recently celebrated her 76^th birthday) was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, presented annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.

Howe has become one of the most widely read American poets.                

Her prose poems, "Everything's a Fake" and "Doubt,” were selected for the anthology Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present.   And, her poem "Catholic" was selected for the 2004 volume of The Best American Poetry.

For Saturday’s Poem, here is Howe’s

Footsteps

I have never arrived
into a new life yet.

Have you?

Do you find the squeak
of boots on snow

excruciating?

Have you heard people
say, It wasn't me,

when they accomplished
a great feat?

I have, often.
But rarely.

•

Possibility
is one of the elements.
It keeps things going.

The ferry
with its ratty engine
and exactitude at chugging
into blocks and chains.

Returning as ever
to mother's house
under a salty rain.

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