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  • The Paris Review

    From the Foreword to Debths

    by Susan Howe Jun 27, 2017 6 minutes

    From the cover of Debths.

    The below is excerpted from the foreword to Debths, Susan Howe’s latest collection, out today from New Directions.

    Going back! Going back!
    “Little Sir Echo, how do you do? / Hello! (Hello!) Hello! (Hello!) / Little Sir Echo, we’ll answer you / Hello! (Hello!) Hello! (Hello!) / Hello! (Hello!) Hello! (Hello!)/ Won’t you come over and play? (and play)/ You’re a nice little fellow / I know by your voice/ But you’re always so far away (away).”
    —Bing Crosby and the Music Maids (1939)

    When I was eight my parents packed me off to Little Sir Echo Camp for Girls on Lake Armington in the foothills of New Hampshire cofounded and owned by Mary Hoisington and Margaret Conoboy ten years earlier. Apparently the women chose the name because of an echo that bounces off the surrounding White Mountains. An actual child may or may not fit parental fantasies. I hated they left for Boston, leaving me alone with my dread of being lost in the past; absent. 

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