Fanny Howe's richly contemplative The Winter Sun is a collection of essays on childhood, language and meaning by one of America's most original contemporary poets. Through a collage of reflections on people, places and times that have been part of her life, she shows the origins and requirements of a vocation that has no name'. She finds proof of this in the lives of others - including Jacques Lusseyran, Scottish nun Sara Grant, Abbe Dubois, Antonia White and Emily Bronte.'