LibGuides: Visiting Writers' Series LibGuide: Marie Howe

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Marie Howe

"Marie Howe." Marie Howe: Bio, http://www.mariehowe.com/home

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For more than thirty years, poet Marie Howe has been transforming ordinary life into extraordinary visions. As Arthur Sze, the most recent National Book Award winner for poetry, has said, “Her poems are acclaimed for writing through loss with verve, but they also find the miraculous in the ordinary and transform quotidian incidents into enduring revelation.” As Howe herself puts it, she is obsessed “with the metaphysical, the spiritual dimensions of life as they present themselves in this world."

Howe’s most recent volume of poetry is Magdalene (2018), which was long-listed for the National Book Award. Her other books are The Good Thief (1999), a National Poetry Series selection; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2009), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and What the Living Do (1999), a wrenching, plain-spoken elegy for her brother John, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1989.

Howe has received numerous honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Institute. From 2012 to 2014, she served as Poet Laureate of New York State, and in 2018 she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She lives in New York City, where she teaches at New York University and Sarah Lawrence College.

Source:

"Marie Howe." https://www.butler.edu/, https://www.butler.edu/vws. Accessed 16 January 2020.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete

The series provides information on authors and their works while placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history.

Interviews:

Words Can Sustain and Save Us- The Millions
January 11, 2018
Present: An Interview with Marie Howe- Porter House Review
March 18
Throughout her writing Marie Howe gives voice and power to the details that make moments in life memorable, and she asks us to do the same in our own lives. Sitting on the porch of the Katherine Anne Porter House in Kyle, Texas, Marie Howe spoke with Joshua Hines about connection through writing and tradition, being present in the world, and the importance of authenticity in writing. Marie Howe is the author of four collections of poetry: Magdalene: Poems; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time; What the Living Do; and The Good Thief. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Harvard Review, The Partisan Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, and many others.
Marie Howe: The Space Between- The Tricycle
Summer 2013
Zen teachers Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison interview poet Marie Howe.

Podcasts:

The Power of Words to Save Us- On Being Podcast
April 25, 2013; 52 minutes
The moral life, Marie Howe says, is lived out in what we say as much as what we do. She became known for her poetry collection What the Living Do, about her brother’s death at 28 from AIDS. Now she has a new book, Magdalene. Poetry is her exuberant and open-hearted way into the words and the silences we live by. She works and plays with a Catholic upbringing, the universal drama of family, the ordinary rituals that sustain us — and how language, again and again, has a power to save us.
Poet Marie Howe On 'What The Living Do' After Loss- NPR
October 19, 2011; 39 minutes
A few years after her younger brother John died from AIDS-related complications in 1989, poet Marie Howe wrote him a poem in the form of a letter. Called "What the Living Do," the poem is an elegiac description of loss, and of living beyond loss. "When he died, it was a terrible loss to all of us," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "As you know, as everybody knows, you think, 'My life is changed so utterly I don't know how to live it anymore.' And then you find a way." Howe's poem "What the Living Do" was recently anthologized in The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry. Howe discusses several of her poems, which deal with topics such as loss, love, spirituality, gender, sexuality and intimacy. "Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die," says Howe. "The most mysterious aspect of being alive might be that — and poetry knows that." Howe is the author of What the Living Do, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time and The Good Thief. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia and New York University.
Marie Howe wants you to carry her poems away- HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing Life
April 28, 2016; 29 minutes
Former New York Poet Laureate Marie Howe talks about music and prayer, poetry and family in this edition of HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing Life, hosted by poet Sandra Beasley. The author of three poetry collections: The Good Thief, What the Living Do, and her latest book, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, Howe discusses how her poetry focuses on conversation and ordinary life, but sometimes with extraordinary characters, like her brother John, the Virgin Mary and her daughter. In the course of this dialogue, Howe reads her poems “The Gate,” “Buddy” and “Once or Twice, or Three Times, I Saw Something.” And Howe talks about her work as poet laureate spreading poetry to people in train stations, parks and subway stops. “Poetry is the most uncapitalistic endeavor. A poem is worth nothing in the exchange of capital. We want people to steal our poems. We want them to carry them away. We want them to copy them and give them to their friends.”

Presentations:

"The Singularity"- TED Talk
December 2018; 2 minutes
Poet Marie Howe introduces us to "ecopoetry," which asks the human ego to step aside and "let the whole living world move into the poem." She reads her poem "The Singularity," inspired by the physics that created the earth.

Many works by our Visiting Writers' Series authors are pulled from their normal places on the shelves and temporarily located in a special display in the Browsing Collection. This collection is located near the Information Commons service desk, next to the vending machines and newspapers.

When you look at an item's record in WorldCat Discovery, be sure to note whether the items is in the General Stacks (mostly 2nd floor) or the Browsing Collection (1st floor). If you have any questions about locating an item on the shelf, don't hesitate to ask us!

Remember - if we don't own it or our copy is currently checked out, you probably can still get a copy through PALShare or interlibrary loan! Learn more.

Magdalene - Poems by Marie Howe
Call Number: Browsing Collection, PS3558.O8925 A6 2018
ISBN: 0393356035
Publication Date: 2018-08-28
Magdalene imagines the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as a woman who embodies the spiritual and sensual, alive in a contemporary landscape—hailing a cab, raising a child, listening to news on the radio. Between facing the traumas of her past and navigating daily life, the narrator of Magdalene yearns for the guidance of her spiritual teacher, a Christ figure, whose death she continues to grieve. Erotic, spirited, and searching for meaning, she is a woman striving to be the subject of her own life, fully human and alive to the sacred in the mortal world.
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time by Marie Howe
Call Number: General Stacks, PS3558.O8925 K56 2008
ISBN: 9780393041996
Publication Date: 2008-03-17
"Hurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders: what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven? And how does one live in Ordinary Time―during those apparently unmiraculous periods of everyday trouble and joy?"
What the Living Do by Marie Howe
Call Number: Browsing Collection, PS3558.O8925 W48 1999
ISBN: 0393318869
Publication Date: 1999-04-17
"A discussion of ten poems that have given readers solace in difficult times, along with a defense of the value of poetry as an art form"
Good Thief by Marie Howe
Call Number: Browsing Collection, PS3558.O8925 G6 1988
ISBN: 0892551275
Publication Date: 1988-05-01
"Selected by Margaret Atwood as a winner in the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series, this unique collection was the first sounding of a deeply authentic voice. Ms. Howe's early writings concern relationship, attachment, and loss, in a highly original search for personal transcendence. Many of the thirty-four poems in The Good Thief appeared in such prestigious journals and periodicals as The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Agni Review, and The Partisan Review."

Literary Sources
Literary Sources provides information in primary sources, critical articles, literary and cultural analysis, and biographies.

New York Times Book Review
This link will take you to the New York Times Book Review hosted on the Literature Resource Center database. It includes issues from 2001 to present. You can search within the entire publication (box at top of page) or you can select a specific year from the drop-down menu. Older issues are available via other databases - ask a librarian for help accessing these issues.
Library Journal Book Review
Click on the Library Journal link (use the one that has more full texts available) to access it through the Butler library. Use the author's name as your search term in the "search within the publication" box to find reviews of his/her work.

Visiting Writers' Series LibGuide: Marie Howe

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Marie Howe

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