New and Selected Poems - Paperback

by Marie Howe (Author)

Characterized by "a radical simplicity and seriousness of purpose, along with a fearless interest in autobiography and its tragedies and redemptions" (Matthew Zapruder, New York Times Magazine), Marie Howe's poetry transforms penetrating observations of everyday life into sacred, humane miracles. This essential volume draws from each of Howe's four previous collections--including What the Living Do (1997), a haunting archive of personal loss, and the National Book Award-longlisted Magdalene (2017), a spiritual and sensual exploration of contemporary womanhood--and contains twenty new poems. Whether speaking in the voice of the goddess Persephone or thinking about aging while walking the dog, Howe is "a light-bearer, an extraordinary poet of our human sorrow and ordinary joy" (Dorianne Laux).

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Praise for Marie Howe

"Marie Howe writes poems with a clarity that approaches sunlight, shining her gaze into underlit places.... Howe's gift is to render ordinary moments as bright epiphanies."
-- Diana Whitney, San Francisco Chronicle

"Howe's work is deceptively simple.... Yet each poem displays a deep concentration and often a deep, barely concealed sorrow."
-- David Starkey, Santa Barbara Independent

"A poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation."
-- Boston Globe

"A smart, engrossing collection.... Readers of any religious background will find much that seems familiar in the modern-day everywoman who sees herself in the faces of a woman wearing a burka, a woman who longs for children and one who hails a taxi wearing a black suit and high heels."
-- Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post

"Marie Howe is magic."
-- Jeannine Hall Gailey, Rumpus

"In these powerful and accessible poems, Howe...seems to argue, loving the world, in spite and because of suffering, is life's great risk, and its reward."
-- Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR

"Howe is a truth-teller of the first order. Fearless in presenting unfiltered experiences, she interweaves her simple, economical language into long, subordinated sentences, loose, enjambed couplets that spill compellingly down the page with near-invisible artistry."
-- Providence Sunday Journal