Works by
Marie Howe
(Poet)
[1950 - ]

The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems (2008)
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 periods that are not apparently miraculous?

What the Living Do: Poems (1997)
Informed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive. Over and over again these astonishing poems touch the place where the inner life and the outer world meet, the moments when we realize that we are still living.

What do the living do? They make breakfast, park cars, bury the dead, shovel snow, make love, return videos; they suffer and survive and remember and speak. Daring, clear, heartbreaking, provocative, compassionate, these poems tell unforgettable stories, the stories of all our lives.

In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic, (ed., with Michael Klein) (1995)

The Good Thief: Poems (1988) -- Winner 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series
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.