What the Living Do: Poems - Hardcover

Howe, Marie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393045609 ISBN 13: 9780393045604

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997

Synopsis

"What the Living Do. . . is a deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel."―Boston Globe

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. What the Living Do reflects "a new form of confessional poetry, one shared to some degree by other women poets such as Sharon Olds and Jane Kenyon. Unlike the earlier confessional poetry of Plath, Lowell, Sexton et al., Howe's writing is not so much a moan or a shriek as a song. It is a genuinely feminine form . . . a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation" (Boston Globe).

About this title

About the Author

Marie Howe is the former poet laureate of New York and the author of three previous collections. Magdalene was longlisted for the National Book Award. Howe teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.

Reviews

This compassionate memorial to illness and the loss of Howe's brother, John, and other friends ably depicts the growth and development of personal bonds against which "post-modern brokenness" is measured. (Howe has also coedited an important collection of essays about AIDS, In the Company of My Solitude, LJ 7/95). This thoughtful analysis of elements of grief ("a living remedy") will perhaps help to ease trauma of death, as does Robert Frost's "Home Burial," but full comprehension of "cherishing" and pain after "the wake and the funeral" seems impossible. The best of these empathetic poems demonstrate a longing for wholeness and appreciation of the "terrified and radiant" mysteries of silence. Sharing "a secret, unrecoverable history" of father, brothers, sisters, and friends?"what the living do"?Howe creates the first draft of a contemporary woman's spiritual biography. For larger collections.?Frank Allen, North Hampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393045609
• ISBN 13: 9780393045604
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96