{"id":10745,"date":"2025-01-20T16:58:55","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T16:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=10745"},"modified":"2025-01-20T22:43:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T22:43:25","slug":"new-selected-poems-by-marie-howe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/20\/new-selected-poems-by-marie-howe\/","title":{"rendered":"New & Selected Poems by Marie Howe"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What the Dying do<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Marie Howe is one of our greatest living poets on the subject of death\u2014and consequently, on what it means to live, as we all do, in death\u2019s shadow.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Whitney Rio-Ross
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Marie Howe is dying. So am I. And unless you have made some terrible deal with a demonic force, so are you.<\/p>

Usually, I am reminded of death when reading selected or collected works because they are usually published after a poet has died. This makes sense; a true \u201ccollected works\u201d would include everything\u2014the popular, the unremarkable, perhaps even the unpublished if a family member stumbles upon some decent ones. But recently, more living poets have begun publishing books of their selected poetry. I must admit to questioning this trend. Is it a purely financial move, hoping that readers will be more likely to purchase the greatest hits in hardback for thirty to forty dollars than buy separate paperback collections priced at fifteen dollars each? (As a poet, I completely understand and in no way judge that motivation.) Is it a poet\u2019s attempt to have some control over their legacy before they have no say? (I wonder this especially about selected works with introductions. It seems a bit like a eulogy rehearsal.) But then comes my worst fear: What if this poet is actually about to die? What if they only have a few poems left in them, and instead of publishing one more chapbook, their agent thought that a selected works with a few new poems would be more lucrative or dignified?<\/p>

I have no idea what Marie Howe\u2019s motivations were for putting together a book of selected works and twenty new poems. I hope with my whole heart that she is in excellent health and will write and publish many more poems during her lifetime. But this is a book for the dead and dying. In these pages, death isn\u2019t a ghost haunting a handful of poems. Death is a main character who only leaves the party for an occasional smoke break.<\/p>

Howe\u2019s Selected Works<\/em> even begins with death in the opening \u201cPrologue,\u201d which contains several lines listing the many loved ones who had died by the time Howe was \u201cjust past the middle\u201d of her life. The second poem, \u201cPostscript,\u201d looks at the end of our planet due to climate change and what that means for those who come after us. The refrain is one of accountability: \u201cWhat we did.\u201d We are killers, willing agents of death. Though we might have spent our whole lives convincing ourselves otherwise, Howe accuses, \u201cIt was right \/ in front of you, right in front of your eyes \/ and you didn\u2019t see.\u201d The third poem, \u201cPracticing,\u201d begins, \u201cToday I\u2019m going to practice being dead for a few hours.\u201d<\/p>

For Howe, writing so much about death isn\u2019t novel, a new obsession brought on by examining new fine lines. Death has always been one of Howe\u2019s favorite themes and is even a presence in her first book\u2019s religious and lyrical verse. It comes to center stage in her second book of narrative poetry, What the Living Do<\/em>, which recounts the story of her brother dying from an AIDS-related illness and her grief during this period and after his death. In these poems, death is not an idea but a painful, embodied reality. The eponymous poem is addressed to Johnny after he died, and its raw voice, crisp imagery, and profound insight earns it the fame it\u2019s garnered over the years. Though her following collection, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time<\/em>, steps away from this narrative and makes nowhere near as many references to death, it still appears. The way those poems weave spirituality and metaphysics through narrative and observational poetry kept me thinking of death as I read them. The eternal and temporal meet in her poems on the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, and through them a quiet, lyrical death march pulses. In her latest collection, Magdalene<\/em>, death is once again front and center. Her poem \u201cOctober\u201d even shows how death allows a reprieve from loneliness when the speaker realizes, \u201cYes I’ll die, \/ so will everyone, so has everyone. It\u2019s what we have in common.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I want people to read Marie Howe\u2019s poetry for centuries after she has finished writing it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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There are many ways to put together a selected works book. Most I read are arranged chronologically, ending with whatever new poems the poet has written since their most recent collection. Readers see the poet grow or change. (I personally do not believe in the artistic myth of progress, that writers get consistently better over time.) Howe, however, chooses a different approach. She begins with her new poems and then goes back to her first book, moving chronologically from there. \u201cHere I am,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd this is how I got here.\u201d By beginning in the present with so many poems about death and aging, Howe actually reminded me that she is alive, still creating and evolving. She does these things in the face of death, but not in defiance of an impending doom. Marie Howe is a poet who writes about death as not an eventual end but an abiding fact. Of course she is creating new poems while looking back on her previous work. Of course \u201cthat yearning\u201d she speaks of in \u201cWhat the Living Do\u201d continues as our bodies break down, because we are living and dying with every breath taken, every poem written.<\/p>

And of course, our death does not mean we no longer endure. For decades, Howe has written about historical and fictional women who endure long past their deaths. Several of her poems speak in the voice of Eve and Mary, mother of Jesus. Her most recent collection is written in the voice of a contemporary Mary Magdalene. Her new poems include several about Persephone, dragged to death\u2019s realm over and over. Her repeated death is how she remained so firmly in our collective imagination. I won\u2019t hazard a guess as to whether any living author\u2019s legacy will outlast them for long. Plenty of excellent writers people once described as indispensable haven\u2019t made the canon fifty years later. I want people to read Marie Howe\u2019s poetry for centuries after she has finished writing it. But of all the contemporary poets I read, Howe is the one who writes as someone entirely unconcerned with that question, someone truly comfortable writing in death\u2019s presence, whatever the world might do with her work after she dies. This attitude serves her poetry. It allows each poem to embrace \u201cthat yearning,\u201d to cherish itself. I believe Howe offers a brilliant ars poetica in \u201cPersephone and Demeter,\u201d one her poems live into page after page:<\/p>

Like everything alive \u00a0\u00a0I was meant to be split open,
to blossom, to be sucked, to be eaten,
to lean, to bend, to wither,
to die and die and die until I died.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Whitney Rio-Ross<\/strong> is the author of the chapbook Birthmarks<\/em> (Wipf & Stock) and poetry editor for Fare Forward<\/em>. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Whale Road Review<\/em>, EcoTheo Review<\/em>, Earth & Altar<\/em>, Presence Journal<\/em>, SWING<\/em>, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Nashville, TN, and her debut collection, thunder makes us<\/em>, is forthcoming in 2026 from Belle Point Press.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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New and Selected Poems<\/strong> was released by W.W. Norton on April 2, 2024. Fare Forward<\/em> appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher here<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marie Howe is one of our greatest living poets on the subject of death\u2014and consequently, on what it means to live, as we all do, in death\u2019s shadow. Review by Whitney 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