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keegs's review against another edition
4.0
I've been meaning to pick up some Marie Howe for ages, ever since I read "Annunciation" a few years ago. And I'm so glad I did. I love when poets can play with language and communicate thoughtfully without going too deep into LaLaLand. Marie Howe strikes the balance well. You know she's a good poet when her words actually almost force you to pause and reflect.
Definitely will be reading more by her when I get the chance!!
Oh and I should add: the blurb tells you exactly what you're in for. I appreciate the reflections on mundanity and the exploration of sacred vs secular!
Definitely will be reading more by her when I get the chance!!
Oh and I should add: the blurb tells you exactly what you're in for. I appreciate the reflections on mundanity and the exploration of sacred vs secular!
raoul_g's review against another edition
4.0
Marie Howe, in this little collection of poems, writes about ordinary time. Besides the meaning related to the Christian liturgical calendar, ordinary time can also be understood quite literally: A time in which nothing extraordinary happens. No miracles, and a lot of routine. The Prologue captures this beautifully with these hints to some elements of stories from the Gospels :
Howe thus sets forth to describe not the ecstasies of life, but rather its normal monotony. There are poems about Howe going shopping with her daughter or about picking her up from preschool. Sometimes, as in these two poems, there creeps a certain sadness into the daily routine. The sudden realization of the shortness of life ("Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?") or to the death of a friend ("And I said, ok. I feel a little sad. And she said, Tell me the whole thing Mom. And I said, ok Elise died. Elise is dead and the world feels weary and brokenhearted. And she said, Tell me the whole thing Mom.").
Many of the poems touch religious topics, but most do so only very lightly (I don't know how to describe it better). 'Prayer' for example is a pondering about her inability to make time to pray, which in the end turns out to be itself a beautiful prayer. In 'Government' Howe talks about struggling with the many different desires and needs in oneself and how these voices make it almost impossible to think clearly, using the metaphor of an inner kingdom:
Although not all poems were as interesting to me as the ones I mentioned, I still quite enjoyed the collection as a whole and really appreciate Howe's style and the way she weaves feelings like sadness and helplessness in a beautiful way into her poems.
The rules, once again, applied
One loaf = one loaf. One fish = one fish.
The so-called Kings were dead.
And the woman who had been healed grew tired of telling her story,
and sometimes asked her daughter to tell it.
Howe thus sets forth to describe not the ecstasies of life, but rather its normal monotony. There are poems about Howe going shopping with her daughter or about picking her up from preschool. Sometimes, as in these two poems, there creeps a certain sadness into the daily routine. The sudden realization of the shortness of life ("Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?") or to the death of a friend ("And I said, ok. I feel a little sad. And she said, Tell me the whole thing Mom. And I said, ok Elise died. Elise is dead and the world feels weary and brokenhearted. And she said, Tell me the whole thing Mom.").
Many of the poems touch religious topics, but most do so only very lightly (I don't know how to describe it better). 'Prayer' for example is a pondering about her inability to make time to pray, which in the end turns out to be itself a beautiful prayer. In 'Government' Howe talks about struggling with the many different desires and needs in oneself and how these voices make it almost impossible to think clearly, using the metaphor of an inner kingdom:
So many kingdoms,
And in each kingdom, so many people: the disinherited son, the corrupt
counselor,
the courtesan, the fool.
And so many gods—arguing among themselves,
over toast, through the lunch salad
and on into the long hours of the mild spring afternoon— I’m the god.
No I’m the god. No I’m the god.
I can hardly hear myself over their muttering.
How can I discipline my army? They’re exhausted and want more money.
How can I disarm when my enemy seems so intent?
Although not all poems were as interesting to me as the ones I mentioned, I still quite enjoyed the collection as a whole and really appreciate Howe's style and the way she weaves feelings like sadness and helplessness in a beautiful way into her poems.
shanviolinlove's review against another edition
4.0
Lovely, LOVELY events going on here. The third collection of Marie Howe's poems, you start to get a feel for the subjects and motifs she favors. Childhood abuse appears again, this time paralleling softer, tender, happier moments as a mother; as in her first collection, Howe retells biblical narratives, devoting an entire section of her book to Poems from the Life of Mary (though most of them are not directly speaking to biblical Mary). Howe's speaker wrestles with humanity in its most humble at the supermarket, considers American luxury with her students or violence around the world and in her past, mourns her mother, and questions her relationship with God. It's bold, honest poetry compelling its readers to return to it again and again.
toph444's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse
delmarche's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
“she must have kissed me / with her mouth, first grief, first air [..]”
toniapeckover's review against another edition
4.0
Layers of faith, longing, woundedness, resiliency, memory. "Nonviolence" took my breath away. A moving collection.
lukenotjohn's review
4.25
I just read through this whole collection in one sitting, and while I don't know if that gave me enough time to really appreciate the weight of it all, I really loved it nonetheless. I didn't know what to expect from Howe and initially felt a bit thrown by her irreverence, I guess anticipating a more "spiritual" or "depthy" exploration of life. Of course, the very point of the book (and, one could argue, of the concept of ordinary time) is to deconstruct the boundaries between sacred and secular, "spiritual" and "irreverent." Interestingly, I think I've often read writers and poets infusing and naming the sacred within the secular, sort of elevating ordinary moments into ones of holiness with the heightened language one would expect, and many of these poems felt like an inverse, stripping things down and lowering them to an earthy accessibility.
These observations (and I'd say the collection as a whole) seem best exemplified by my two favorites. "Easter" is a brief poem reflecting on the straightforward reality of the resurrection moment that can be read as either comical or profound or both, and "Prayer" is an unblinking confession of her perpetual resistance to doing just that. In both, the reality of the sacred is undeniable in a way that's taken for granted, seemingly putting it just out reach, akin to the dusty mist of soul her Mary remembers seeing rise up in the also beautiful "Once or Twice or Three Times, I Saw Something."
I loved the aforementioned poems, and as a whole really enjoyed all of the ones written from Mary's perspective, but especially "Annunciation." I have to applaud Howe for writing in such a way that all airs of pretension that so often haunt contemporary poetry have been kept at bay without also writing so simply that the words are just boring (although a few here do read more like tiny vignettes of memoir or short story more than poetry, however that's defined). Instead, most of these are beautifully grounded, with their magic emphasized by how simultaneously ordinary they are (this is particularly true for "My Mother's Body," "Questions," and "Sometimes the Moon Sat in the Well at Night.")
These observations (and I'd say the collection as a whole) seem best exemplified by my two favorites. "Easter" is a brief poem reflecting on the straightforward reality of the resurrection moment that can be read as either comical or profound or both, and "Prayer" is an unblinking confession of her perpetual resistance to doing just that. In both, the reality of the sacred is undeniable in a way that's taken for granted, seemingly putting it just out reach, akin to the dusty mist of soul her Mary remembers seeing rise up in the also beautiful "Once or Twice or Three Times, I Saw Something."
I loved the aforementioned poems, and as a whole really enjoyed all of the ones written from Mary's perspective, but especially "Annunciation." I have to applaud Howe for writing in such a way that all airs of pretension that so often haunt contemporary poetry have been kept at bay without also writing so simply that the words are just boring (although a few here do read more like tiny vignettes of memoir or short story more than poetry, however that's defined). Instead, most of these are beautifully grounded, with their magic emphasized by how simultaneously ordinary they are (this is particularly true for "My Mother's Body," "Questions," and "Sometimes the Moon Sat in the Well at Night.")