{"id":72486,"date":"2014-06-10T19:30:41","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T23:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=72486"},"modified":"2014-06-10T18:50:34","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T22:50:34","slug":"originals-and-remnants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/","title":{"rendered":"Originals and Remnants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xR6cfDFTL8Q?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The poet Susan Howe is seventy-seven today. A few years ago, she and the musician David Grubbs collaborated on \u201cFrolic Architecture,\u201d a series of multidisciplinary performances that sprang from a book of her collage poems by the same name. Harvard has posted a video of the performance, which is quietly, insistently disruptive. As it progresses, prerecorded shards of Howe\u2019s voice seem to fall into her live voice, and Grubbs fills the space with incidental sounds: insect chirps, gravel and snow and leaves variously underfoot. The performance seems at once to take on weight and ascend into the ether.<\/p>\n<p>Howe remarked on the collage, and the process of recording it, in her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/6189\/the-art-of-poetry-no-97-susan-howe\">2012 Art of Poetry interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">HOWE<\/p>\n<p>I am an Americanist. There\u2019s something that we do, a Romantic, utopian ideal of poetry as revelation at the same instant it\u2019s a fall into fracture and trespass. <em>Frolic Architecture<\/em> cuts itself to bits. It could be that because I am a woman, bullets are more like blanks. What fuels the poems in that collection is the sense of epic breaking into shards.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve heard the recording of your performance of <em>Frolic<\/em>, and you actually speak\u2014sound out\u2014its fragments and phonemes, those shards. You treat your work as a score.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">HOWE<\/p>\n<p>Collaborating with the musician-composer David Grubbs has brought vividly home to me how acoustic a seemingly collaged and visual work can be. Several years ago our first collaboration was for a performance at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, and was based around an early poem of mine called \u201cThorow.\u201d We collaborated again to produce <em>Souls of the Labadie Tract<\/em>. The work I have done with David has influenced the course of my later poetry by showing me a range of contemporary music with which I was unfamiliar. It also restored my earlier interest in Charles Ives. I love the way Ives\u2019s musical use of quotation throws connectives to the winds. His work is Romantic and iconoclastic at once.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And in the journal <em>Lana Turner<\/em>, Ben Lerner <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lanaturnerjournal.com\/archives\/lernerletter\">wrote with typical acuity about the performance<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I assumed Grubbs had digitally manipulated Howe\u2019s voice in order to mimic the fragmentation of the collages. And Grubbs did often and artfully alter her voice, but it turns out that many of the sounds I thought were digital slivers weren\u2019t. It simply did not occur to me that Howe would be capable of reading such diverse phonemes and even smaller linguistic particles in real time with such precision. But she is: I have never heard a person pronounce \u201cnt\u201d or \u201crl,\u201d for instance, so exactly. Howe can render even the most distressed text acoustic \u2026 Howe\u2019s recorded voice\u2014sometimes digitally cut up, sometimes left alone\u2014alternated or overlapped with the live performance, and Grubbs had made sure that there was little or no perceptible sonic difference between what was digital and what was happening before us; when I shut my eyes, I couldn\u2019t tell. This blurring of the boundary between the live and the recorded was a deft way to indicate how Howe\u2019s poems are at once originals and remnants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The poet Susan Howe is seventy-seven today. A few years ago, she and the musician David Grubbs collaborated on \u201cFrolic Architecture,\u201d a series of multidisciplinary performances that sprang from a book of her collage poems by the same name. Harvard has posted a video of the performance, which is quietly, insistently disruptive. As it progresses, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1539],"tags":[14257,3263,9158,14258,2051,14260,14259,1132,4602,165,9393,7519],"class_list":["post-72486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-multimedia","tag-ambient-music","tag-ben-lerner","tag-birthdays","tag-collaboration","tag-collage","tag-david-grubbs","tag-frolic-architecture","tag-interviews","tag-lana-turner","tag-poetry","tag-susan-howe","tag-the-art-of-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Originals and Remnants by Dan Piepenbring<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 10, 2014 \u2013 The poet Susan Howe is seventy-seven today. A few years ago, she and the musician David Grubbs collaborated on \u201cFrolic Architecture,\u201d a series of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Originals and Remnants by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 10, 2014 \u2013 The poet Susan Howe is seventy-seven today. A few years ago, she and the musician David Grubbs collaborated on \u201cFrolic Architecture,\u201d a series of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-10T23:30:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\"},\"headline\":\"Originals and Remnants\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-06-10T23:30:41+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/\"},\"wordCount\":525,\"commentCount\":1,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"ambient music\",\"Ben Lerner\",\"birthdays\",\"collaboration\",\"collage\",\"David Grubbs\",\"Frolic Architecture\",\"interviews\",\"Lana Turner\",\"poetry\",\"Susan Howe\",\"The Art of Poetry\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Video &amp; Multimedia\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/\",\"name\":\"Originals and Remnants by Dan Piepenbring\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-06-10T23:30:41+00:00\",\"description\":\"June 10, 2014 \u2013 The poet Susan Howe is seventy-seven today. A few years ago, she and the musician David Grubbs collaborated on \u201cFrolic Architecture,\u201d a series of\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Originals and Remnants\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\",\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Dan Piepenbring\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpiepenbring\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Originals and Remnants by Dan Piepenbring","description":"June 10, 2014 \u2013 The poet Susan Howe is seventy-seven today. A few years ago, she and the musician David Grubbs collaborated on \u201cFrolic Architecture,\u201d a series of","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Originals and Remnants by Dan Piepenbring","og_description":"June 10, 2014 \u2013 The poet Susan Howe is seventy-seven today. A few years ago, she and the musician David Grubbs collaborated on \u201cFrolic Architecture,\u201d a series of","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2014-06-10T23:30:41+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":675,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Dan Piepenbring","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Dan Piepenbring","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/"},"author":{"name":"Dan Piepenbring","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8"},"headline":"Originals and Remnants","datePublished":"2014-06-10T23:30:41+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/"},"wordCount":525,"commentCount":1,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"keywords":["ambient music","Ben Lerner","birthdays","collaboration","collage","David Grubbs","Frolic Architecture","interviews","Lana Turner","poetry","Susan Howe","The Art of Poetry"],"articleSection":["Video &amp; Multimedia"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/","name":"Originals and Remnants by Dan Piepenbring","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-06-10T23:30:41+00:00","description":"June 10, 2014 \u2013 The poet Susan Howe is seventy-seven today. A few years ago, she and the musician David Grubbs collaborated on \u201cFrolic Architecture,\u201d a series of","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/10\/originals-and-remnants\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Originals and Remnants"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8","name":"Dan Piepenbring","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Dan Piepenbring"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpiepenbring\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72498,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72486\/revisions\/72498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}