Post by saraho112 on May 31, 2013 20:45:12 GMT -5
Born and raised in Rochester, New York in the 1950s, Marie Howe grew up with nine siblings, her being the second oldest of the nine. Her family was very religious and Howe was raised as a Catholic. She went to school at the Sacred Heart Covent School and then later earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Windsor. She then worked as an English teacher and then a news reporter before discovering her passion for poetry.
Her discovery came at the age of thirty and she went to Columbia University to earn her MFA in 1983, working along side with Stanley Kunitz, another famous poet, whom Howe regarded as her “true teacher”. Her first collection of poetry, out of three, The Good Thief, released in 1988. It has been described as addressing “the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred” by Kunitz who awarded Howe the Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. It is highly regarded for the self-doubting speakers of the poems who voice their concerns with Biblical and mythical allusions. Margaret Atwood said the poems “transcend their own dark roots” and chose the book for the National Poetry Series.
Her second book of poetry, What the Living Do was incredibly influenced by the death of her brother John in 1989 by an AIDS related illness. From there Howe changed her aesthetic completely, stripping her poems of metaphor and using the collection as a transparent, accessible documentary of loss. Many of the poems are inspired by moments in her own childhood and in moments after the death of John, like in the title poem, “What the Living Do”.
Howe goes back to metaphor in her third book of poetry, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, leaving her personal narratives. She herself has described this as a return to her “obsess[ion] with the metaphysical, the spiritual dimensions of life as they present themselves in this world.” Howe continues to explore, starting with the ordinary and quickly moving toward understanding the spirit.
Her use of the ordinary language to turn something extraordinary, as seen in much of her poetry, concentrating mainly on the basic everyday things that ‘the living do’. She tries to make the world pay attention. As she notes “This might be the most difficult task for us in postmodern life: not to look away from what is actually happening. To put down the iPod and the e-mail and the phone. To look long enough so that we can look through it—like a window.” To her it is the little things that make life important and interesting like “spilling coffee down [her] sleeve” or “parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold”. This is what living is and we all must pay attention or it goes by too fast. And so, with great pleasure, please join me in welcoming Marie Howe as Westfield High School’s 2013 visiting poet.
Word Count: 505
Her discovery came at the age of thirty and she went to Columbia University to earn her MFA in 1983, working along side with Stanley Kunitz, another famous poet, whom Howe regarded as her “true teacher”. Her first collection of poetry, out of three, The Good Thief, released in 1988. It has been described as addressing “the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred” by Kunitz who awarded Howe the Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. It is highly regarded for the self-doubting speakers of the poems who voice their concerns with Biblical and mythical allusions. Margaret Atwood said the poems “transcend their own dark roots” and chose the book for the National Poetry Series.
Her second book of poetry, What the Living Do was incredibly influenced by the death of her brother John in 1989 by an AIDS related illness. From there Howe changed her aesthetic completely, stripping her poems of metaphor and using the collection as a transparent, accessible documentary of loss. Many of the poems are inspired by moments in her own childhood and in moments after the death of John, like in the title poem, “What the Living Do”.
Howe goes back to metaphor in her third book of poetry, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, leaving her personal narratives. She herself has described this as a return to her “obsess[ion] with the metaphysical, the spiritual dimensions of life as they present themselves in this world.” Howe continues to explore, starting with the ordinary and quickly moving toward understanding the spirit.
Her use of the ordinary language to turn something extraordinary, as seen in much of her poetry, concentrating mainly on the basic everyday things that ‘the living do’. She tries to make the world pay attention. As she notes “This might be the most difficult task for us in postmodern life: not to look away from what is actually happening. To put down the iPod and the e-mail and the phone. To look long enough so that we can look through it—like a window.” To her it is the little things that make life important and interesting like “spilling coffee down [her] sleeve” or “parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold”. This is what living is and we all must pay attention or it goes by too fast. And so, with great pleasure, please join me in welcoming Marie Howe as Westfield High School’s 2013 visiting poet.
Word Count: 505