Souls of the Labadie Tract (NEW DIRECTIONS)

One of my favourite books of modern poetry.

A fantastic collection of prose and poetry. Howe's perceptive abilities reveal the particulars of some of the most marginalized instances of american history and culture.

I feel bad for this author. I have never read such a horrible book in all my life. If this is poetry, I'm my ears are either deaf to it or it is a bunch of non-related words strung together in an attempt to make them appear to be coherent. I've been doing genealogy research because my great, great, great, great grand mother was the wife of Petrus Sluyter, the head of the Labadist colony. I was hoping that it would shed some insight into the people and their lives on a more personal level.This poor woman has attempted to "channel" their thoughts and has failed miserably to do so. The Labadists were not spiritualists as she proclaims. They were hard working farmers who wanted to live a holy life. They attempted and failed to live a communal life. Much of the failure of the Labadist colony lies on the shoulders of my GGGG grandmother's second husband, Petrus Sluyter. He found business more interesting than spiritual matters and found the new opportunities in the new world too hard to pass up. I'm sure he was a conflicted man. He had slaves, was a tyrant and didn't live the life he asked others to leadThis book was badly produced too. Many of the pages in the last part of the book, the words are not legible. The paper must have twisted in the printer and it looks like they photocopied shredded pages anyway and stuck them in the book.I would offer to sell mine but I'd hate to dupe someone into paying for this book. It is going to my recycle bin. Save your money, it is a total waste of money.

Archival excerpts from early Colonial history populate this space, energize it to starry heights. Susan notes "I believed in an American aesthetic of uncertaintly that could represent beauty in syllables so scarce and rushed they would appear to expand though they lay half-smothered in local history." We, the recipients of the unearthing, appreciate her brilliance. Those who recall Singularities will find refuge in the verses of 118 Westerly Terrace, such as "Low in self abasement lightpasses through linen as ifto offer heaven as if roofwill have no hold againstone hour shred of another"Emily Dickinson walks these pages also, as in "For a long time I workedthis tallest racketty poemby light of a single candle"The last page of this book fades with a trace of some mysterious writing, but does not bestow darkness.She speaks of "concrete totality of singular interjections, crucified spellings, abbreviations, irrational apprehensions"..."details to oratorically bloom" and so they do, in this fine work.