A review by monasterymonochrome
What the Living Do: Poems by Marie Howe

3.0

A moving collection of poems, particularly the section about the death of Howe's brother. This takes a very memoir-like approach to poetry, and the style was a little straightforward for my usual taste, so I don't think it's a book I'll necessarily return to, but I appreciated it for what it was, and there were two or three poems especially that will stick with me. I'm not sure why the decision was made to have the title poem be the penultimate piece rather than the final one. To me, the actual final poem was actually one of the weaker ones, and so it ended the book on a bit of a flat note where the title poem seemed like a truer and more memorable culmination of the book's themes.