Susan Howe

Susan Howe
Susan Howe, c. 2007
Born	(1937-06-10) June 10, 1937 (age 79) Boston, Massachusetts
Occupation	Poet, scholar
Nationality	United States
Ethnicity	Anglo-Irish, English
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	Boston Museum School of Fine Arts (1961)
Genre	poetry, essay
Literary movement	Postmodern
Notable awards	Bollingen Prize in American Poetry (2011); Guggenheim Fellowship; Roy Harvey Pearce Prize for Lifetime Achievement; Robert Frost Medal, Poetry Society of America (2017)
Spouse	Harvey Quaytman, David von Schlegell, Peter Hewitt Hare

Susan Howe (born June 10, 1937) is an American poet, scholar, essayist and critic, who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among others poetry movements. Her work is often classified as Postmodern because it expands traditional notions of genre (fiction, essay, prose and poetry). Many of Howe's books are layered with historical, mythical, and other references, often presented in an unorthodox format. Her work contains lyrical echoes of sound, and yet is not pinned down by a consistent metrical pattern or a conventional poetic rhyme scheme.

Howe is the recipient of the 2017 Robert Frost Medal awarded by the Poetry Society of America, the recipient of the 2011 Bollingen Prize in American Poetry, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Howe was born on June 10, 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts. She grew up in nearby Cambridge. Her mother, Mary Manning, was an Irish playwright and acted for Dublin's Gate Theatre. Her father Mark DeWolfe Howe, was a professor at Harvard Law School and was the official biographer of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. She has two sisters, Helen Howe Braider and poet Fanny Howe. Howe graduated from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts in 1961. She married the painter, Harvey Quaytman in 1961. She was married to her second husband, sculptor David von Schlegell, until his death (1992). Her third husband, Peter Hewitt Hare, a philosopher and professor at the University of Buffalo, died in January 2008. She has two children, the painter R.H. Quaytman, and the writer Mark von Schlegell. She lives in Guilford, Connecticut.