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circlebeing's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
seeyf's review against another edition
5.0
This is a book of poems that are quietly, painfully heartbreaking –– Marie Howe writes most significantly about the death of her brother John, but also of childhood abuse, divorce and the deaths of her friends. Instead of focusing entirely on the rawness of these tragic events, she turns a close eye towards the outside world and frames them with the elements of everyday life: a clogged kitchen sink, rain, tulips, snow, driving, parking, children’s games, kisses. This juxtaposition imbues the ordinary with new significance, but also describes the manner in which the world absorbs the drama of our inner lives yet continues on with its beauty and surprises, its little annoyances and dreary banality. It suggests that the two are intimately and necessarily bound together, and perhaps this recognition is what compels us to keep on living.
That is not to detract from the fact that there is genuine pain here, pain that gradually creeps in and crescendoes suddenly –– made even more shocking by the ordinariness of its surroundings and alluding to the fact that even these experiences are not unique to Howe but are repeated in a thousand quiet households, their cries silently suppressed. But above all Howe teaches us about death in lines that are powerfully spare and exact: how it changes us (“I had no idea that the gate I would step through/ to finally enter this world/ would be the space my brother’s body made.”); how so much of the process of loss is the uneventful passing of time (“Most of it happened without music/ the clink of a spoon from the kitchen/ someone talking. Silence./ Somebody sleeping. Someone watching somebody sleep.”); how we remember its passing (“Suddenly close and distinct, it seemed finished, as if time were a room/ I could gaze clear across”); and how it can comfort us (“and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes./ Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,/ whatever he says I’ll do”).
In an interview, Marie Howe says that “poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die. The most mysterious aspect of being alive might be that, and poetry knows that.” The intimate commingling of life with death in What the Living Do achieves this exactly, and one comes out of reading it with a renewed appreciation for everyday life, and the mystery that is present alongside it.
That is not to detract from the fact that there is genuine pain here, pain that gradually creeps in and crescendoes suddenly –– made even more shocking by the ordinariness of its surroundings and alluding to the fact that even these experiences are not unique to Howe but are repeated in a thousand quiet households, their cries silently suppressed. But above all Howe teaches us about death in lines that are powerfully spare and exact: how it changes us (“I had no idea that the gate I would step through/ to finally enter this world/ would be the space my brother’s body made.”); how so much of the process of loss is the uneventful passing of time (“Most of it happened without music/ the clink of a spoon from the kitchen/ someone talking. Silence./ Somebody sleeping. Someone watching somebody sleep.”); how we remember its passing (“Suddenly close and distinct, it seemed finished, as if time were a room/ I could gaze clear across”); and how it can comfort us (“and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes./ Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,/ whatever he says I’ll do”).
In an interview, Marie Howe says that “poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die. The most mysterious aspect of being alive might be that, and poetry knows that.” The intimate commingling of life with death in What the Living Do achieves this exactly, and one comes out of reading it with a renewed appreciation for everyday life, and the mystery that is present alongside it.