Souls of the Labadie Tract

Download or read book Souls of the Labadie Tract written by Susan Howe and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three long poems interspersed with prose pieces, Souls of the Labadie Tract takes as its starting point the Labadists, a Utopian Quietest sect that moved from the Netherlands to Cecil County, Maryland in 1684. The community dissolved in 1722. In Souls Howe is lured by archives and libraries, with their ghosts, cranks, manuscripts and material scraps. Souls of the Labadie Tract presents Howe with her signature hybrids of poetry and prose, of evocation and refraction. One thread winding through Souls is silken: from the epigraphs of Edwards ("the silkworm is a remarkable type of Christ...") and of Stevens ("the poet makes silk dresses out of worms") to the mulberry tree (food of the silkworms) and the fragment of a wedding dress which ends the book.