Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Fanny Howe’s "What Did You See?" is a haunting meditation on loss, history, and spiritual reckoning, where the past is layered like veils over the present. The poem unfolds as a series of visions, moving between the material and the spectral, the personal and the collective, the earthly and the divine. It engages with imagery of imprisonment, suffering, and transcendence, evoking themes of martyrdom, war, and the fragility of human existence.

The opening lines immediately set a somber tone: "I saw the shrouds of prisoners / like baptismal gowns / buried outside the cemetery." This image fuses birth and death, innocence and suffering. The shrouds—garments of the dead—resemble baptismal gowns, the white robes worn during a ceremony meant to mark spiritual renewal. Yet, instead of a churchyard burial, these bodies lie outside the cemetery, suggesting exclusion, anonymity, perhaps the mass graves of the forgotten or the unrecognized. The placement of the dead beyond consecrated ground hints at histories of atrocity, where burial itself becomes an act of erasure.

The next lines continue this interplay between materiality and ghostliness: "On the canvas frills exhaled / singed wool and cardboard. / The angels arrived as lace." The canvas suggests a painted image, possibly an artwork depicting suffering or commemoration. But the phrase "frills exhaled" makes the painting feel alive, as if the fabric is breathing. The mention of singed wool and cardboard evokes destruction—perhaps burned possessions, remnants of a past consumed by fire. The angels’ arrival as lace suggests fragility, their presence woven into the fabric of history, delicate yet persistent.

In the second section, the poem deepens its meditation on veils and skin, as if searching for where suffering has been inscribed: "The veil has been ripped from the skin / where it was burned in." This suggests wounds—both literal and metaphorical—where the veil is no longer an external covering but fused with the body itself. The idea that "The skin is the veil, the baby-material" connects human flesh to innocence, vulnerability, and the act of inscription. The suggestion that "one dropped the handkerchief / and it was one’s wrist" blurs the boundary between objects and bodies, as though personal identity has become fused with what one carries or wears. This haunting image of dissolution continues: "The cuff is frightening. / Stuffed onto oil. / Water-stains might fence its ghost in." The cuff, a detail of clothing, becomes ominous—perhaps referencing the remnants of garments that mark the absence of their wearers.

The third section introduces "the barbed wire complex," a phrase heavy with historical weight. It suggests concentration camps, imprisonment, borders marked by violence. The line "Winged and flattened / at the same time, poor things!" could refer to those who suffered behind such barriers—human beings reduced to ghostly forms, winged in death but still confined. The invocation of Blake’s figures—perhaps referencing William Blake’s visionary art, where human bodies appear elongated, celestial, yet trapped—reinforces this sense of the eternal struggling within the finite. "When events are not as random / as they seem." This line points to the hidden structure beneath history, the way suffering repeats with terrible purpose.

In the fourth section, Howe turns her attention to clothing, which becomes both an artifact and a symbol of absence: "The article of clothing / is only half there, it’s not full, / but when it falls forward, it is." The unfinished presence of the garment—half-existing, then appearing complete when it moves—mirrors the way memory or history can feel fragmented until a certain shift brings it into focus. The "Terrible emptiness of the spread / neckline and little sleeve." evokes the ghost of a body, the way abandoned clothing still holds the shape of its wearer. The "Half-cooked squares." could reference fabric scorched by fire, or even incomplete structures—remnants of destruction.

The imagery takes on a biblical or apocalyptic tone: "Was this religious fire / and is this where it passed?" The reference to floating on water / of paint, pool-sized, / blue and ridged like foam recalls the Great Flood—an event of both destruction and purification. The final lines of this section—"Noah’s children’s / floating forms."—suggest a vision of the past drowned and drifting, awaiting recognition.

The final section asks a bold and unsettling question: "Angels die?" The idea of angelic mortality contradicts traditional theology, but here, it serves as a "frightening-miracle," a paradox that forces the speaker to reckon with loss on a cosmic scale. The phrase "The Upper God / has let them drop / like centuries into space." suggests a divine abandonment, an indifference that spans eras. And yet, the closing line resists despair: "And I recognize them!" There is a moment of recognition, of connection across time, as if history’s ghosts—whether angels, prisoners, or lost souls—persist in a way that demands acknowledgment.

"What Did You See?" is a deeply layered meditation on history, suffering, and revelation. It moves through landscapes of imprisonment, war, memory, and faith, always questioning what remains and what has been erased. The imagery shifts between the physical and the ephemeral—shrouds, veils, clothing, angels—blurring the boundaries between presence and absence, the living and the dead. Ultimately, the poem does not offer closure but instead insists on recognition, on seeing what history has buried, and on confronting the unsettling truth that some wounds, even those that seem beyond time, still ache to be witnessed.

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