Night Philosophy is collected around the figure of the child, the figure of the child not just as a little person under the tutelage of adults, but also the submerged one, who knows, who is without power, who doesn’t matter. The book proposes a minor politics that disperses all concentrations of power. Fanny Howe chronicles the weak and persistent, those who never assimilate at the cost of having another group to dominate.
Afterword by Chris Kraus.
978-1-9164250-2-6
13.9 × 21.6 cm
130 pp paperback
28 January 2020
Fiction
Poetry
£ 11.99
This book is a prism through which Earth’s ancient songs and tales are distilled; restored to light. It is also a manual for surviving evil. The most important thing for you to understand is that Fanny Howe is a rebel, down to the cellular level. She walks with the prophets and with the unborn. There is no writer like her.
History and images of what we do to each other are illuminated, and then made to sing lurid, fluid truth.
Night Philosophy is sharp and precise. All the time, like a powerful undercurrent, a voltage charger, or Cordelia speaking, language itself exerts its primacy; it insists on remaining true not just to human hope, human feeling, or the questing spirit, but to some idea of a power beyond ourselves.
About the author
Fanny Howe was born on 15 October 1940 in Buffalo, New York. She is the author of more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and taught literature and writing throughout her life, mentoring a generation of American poets, activists and scholars working at the intersection of experimental and metaphysical thinking. She was professor emerita in literature at the University of California, San Diego, until her death on 8 July 2025 in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Endorsements
This book is a prism through which Earth’s ancient songs and tales are distilled; restored to light. It is also a manual for surviving evil. The most important thing for you to understand is that Fanny Howe is a rebel, down to the cellular level. She walks with the prophets and with the unborn. There is no writer like her.
History and images of what we do to each other are illuminated, and then made to sing lurid, fluid truth.
Night Philosophy is sharp and precise. All the time, like a powerful undercurrent, a voltage charger, or Cordelia speaking, language itself exerts its primacy; it insists on remaining true not just to human hope, human feeling, or the questing spirit, but to some idea of a power beyond ourselves.
Fanny Howe is a hallowed voice of the violent and brutal twentieth century. A sacred idiot, a wise friend who passes a bottle of warmth through the icy night, who fishes for what haunts the depths.
Fanny Howe is simply one of the best and most innovative writers alive.
Press
- The White Review Books of the Year
- NZ Poetry Shelf Poetry Shelf celebrates 2021: Fifteen authors make some picks
- Burley Fisher Books Tice Cin Recommends Books for People Who Feel Glitched
- Callie’s Favorite lockdown reads for the holidays
- Institute of Contemporary Art Boston Friday Art Notes: Silueta Works in Mexico
- Action Books Blog Self-Citation in Night Philosophy
- Ignota Hosts Fanny Howe, Eileen Myles and Ariana Reines
- TLS Wandering and wondering: Fanny Howe’s philosophy of childhood
- DC’s Mine for yours: My favorite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2020 so far
- Passa Porta magazine Public Message (25) Two new poems: Fanny Howe
- AnOther Magazine Document literary supplement (ed. Hannah Lack), Issue 38, Spring/Summer Cut by Fanny Howe
- Poetry Foundation Bookforum Talks to Fanny Howe About Night Philosophy
- Bookforum Spiral-Walking: Bookforum talks with Fanny Howe
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