Bunny: Susan Howe on V.R. Lang
Charles Ruas is joined by Susan Howe to reminisce about their collaboration in the production of a 1975 WBAI radio project that celebrated the life and work of poet and playwright, V. R. "Bunny" Lang. This 2004 recording of their discussion serves as an entree to Clocktower Radio's rebroadcast of the short series of historic programs that they produced about the late writer whose "querulous warmth and astounding energy (made her a) 'queen' to her circle of friends".
The original tribute consisted of a series of interviews with Lang's collaborators and contemporaries and a radio play/re-enactment of one of her works.
The young Susan Howe knew Lang, her mother was a member of The Poets' Theater in Cambridge-- a collective that Lang co-founded in 1950 along with Thornton Wilder, William Carlos Williams and others. As a girl, Howe performed in some of their productions, which strongly influenced her future work.
In addition to The Poets' Theater, Lang served in the Canadian Women's Army Corps during WWII and was an editor for the Chicago Review. Following this she move to New York where she became associated with the New York School of Poets and established an important friendship with Frank O'Hara. She died of Hodgkin's disease in 1956 at the age of 32.
American poet and critic, Susan Howe (born 1937) is known for her work infused with historical and mythical references. She is often linked with the Postmodern Language poets. Howe has been awarded with numerous awards, such as two American Book Awards and a Guggenheim fellowship. She has taught at universities across the United States. Her published works include; Hinge Picture (1974), Articulation of Sound Forms in Time (1987), The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (1993), and Frolic Architecture (2011).
Howe has two 2015 releases from New Directions, The Quarry, selections from her uncollected essays, nominated for a National Book Award and including her seminal piece, The End of Art, and a re-issue of her 1993 The Birth-mark, examining the histories of landmark works from Cotton Mather to Emily Dickinson and subsequent American writers.
