Frances Jaffer was an originating co-founder of HOW(ever)—who died on January 20 at age 76, after a long and debilitating struggle with rheumatoid arthritis and its complications. Jaffer was a poet and a trained scientist whose non-stop curiosity, philosophic imperative, and political readiness to claim parity combined to make her a poet/friend/warrior extraordinaire. Jaffer published two intriguing chapbooks and one substantial and brilliant collection of poems during her life, and was engaged with questioning and re-making the poem's body. . . even after her hands could no longer manage the keyboard. When her fingers wouldn't function, she used pencil erasers for pecking out e-mail and getting down rough drafts of poems.
Alleviate
murdering niceties gathers
new bliss
multiform leaf set
yes or no hide necessity alleviate
nasty repeating
friendly blunt sweetly antagonist
mitigate
led belief
letting screen light
descend
aurora borealis
not today
10/22/96
Adequate
for the gallop into propinquity the tiring moving
questionable other
(about death about beauty about the "daily island life"
and around the bend
the Century)?
Does she also cause bliss is she lonesome for
me walking away
address a poem to God, attempt transcendence; though an "air" is not
Music. The real
language which may alter
into
me too