We drove around together...

Fanny Quincy Howe: A Tribute

In her novel “Indivisible,” Fanny made a point to distinguish transmigration from reincarnation; moving from one form to become another, versus renewing a former state. Since the transmigration-formation she began July 8, 2025, I find her billowing in the mostly empty space that opened as we ran the streets together in her end years on this dissonant plane. At last she’s lost her mind; no more straps, no more churning. She slipped this joint for the sky.

The latest in the continuous stream flowing since her departure comes from poet Nidia Hernandez and the generous Arrowsmith Press. Sheila Gallegher brings a wondertale of Brigid of Murroe; Christina Davis reads of many forms of beauty, and hope for saving the world; the “gold under the skin of angels,” from Carolyn Forche, who are “suddenly anxious if told what trembling joy their suffering has brought.” Eileen Myles gives language to Fanny’s going; “Fanny was the house, and the house always wins…I need to know where the house is.” “Six poems equal the dirt in the road” taken from “Goodbye Post Office Square” is John Mulrooney’s pick and Kythe Heller turns to “The Monk and Her Seaside Dreams.” Askold Melnyczuk lifts the lid on surreptitious Geese gatherings. Ezra Fox, James Fraser, Richard Kearney, Robert Haas, Brenda Hillman, Andrea Cohen; click the picture below to watch, to read, and to rest awhile in the presence of our beloved friend and teacher.

I captured her looking out from a Dublin taxi on a journey to Ireland last April. From Dublin, the two of us went on to Glenstal Abbey where, five months later, some of us returned with her wrapped twice in silk and tucked into a white pine box, to put her down into the ground.