Marie Howe

Marie Howe. Photo by Slowking. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Marie Howe (born 1950) is an American poet.

Life

Howe was born in Rochester, New York, the oldest girl of nine children. She attended Sacred Heart Convent School and earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Windsor. She worked briefly as a newspaper reporter in Rochester and as a high school English teacher in Massachusetts.

Howe did not devote serious attention to writing poetry until she turned 30. At the suggestion of an instructor in a writers' workshop, Howe applied to and was accepted at Columbia University where she studied with Stanley Kunitz and earned an M.F.A. in 1983.

In 1998, she published her best-known book of poems, What the Living Do. The title poem in the collection is a haunting lament for her brother with the plain-spoken last line: "I am living, I remember you." Howe's brother John died of an AIDS-related illness in 1989. "John’s living and dying changed my aesthetic entirely," she has said.

In 1995, Howe co-edited, with Michael Klein, a collection of essays, letters, and stories entitled In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, and Harvard Review. Her honors include National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellowships.

She has taught writing at Tufts University and Warren Wilson College. She is on the writing faculties at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and New York University. She lives in New York City with her daughter.

Recognition

Her debut book, The Good Thief, was selected by Margaret Atwood as the winner of the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series.(Citation needed)

In August 2012 she was named the New York State Poet.

Awards

• 1992 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• 1998 Guggenheim Fellowship

Publications

Poetry

• The Good Thief. New York: Persea Books, 1988.
• What the Living Do. New York: Norton, 1998.
• Poems from the Life of Mary. New York: Center for Book Arts, 2003.
• The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. New York: Norton, 2008.

Edited

• In the Company of My Solitude: American writing from the AIDS pandemic (edited with Michael Klein). New York: Persea Books, 1995.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Audio / video

Marie Howe, NY Poet Laureate performs "After the Movie"

• Marie Howe / Alan Barnett, February 27, 1991 (cassette). Washington, DC: American University, 1991.
• NYCAPS Reading, Parts 1 & 2 (with Ray Patterson). New York: Poets House, 1993.
• Marie Howe: A Reading, March 5, 1997 (audiobook). Tucson, AZ: Tucson Poetry Center, 1997.
• Lunch poems, Marie Howe, 4/1/99 (cassette). Berkeley, CA: Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1999.

Except where noted, discographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

Preceded by Jean Valentine

New York State Poet 2012-2014

Succeeded by -

External links

Poems

• "The Star Market" at The New Yorker
• Poem: "How Some of It Happened"
• "How Many Times" at Poetry 180
• Two poems by Marie Howe
• Marie Howe profile & 6 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Marie Howe b. 1950 at the Poetry Foundation

Prose

• Personal Essay: O: The Oprah Magazine > Memoir by Marie Howe: 'Not to Look Away'

Audio / video

• Video: PBS > Poetry Everywhere > Marie Howe Reading 'The Gate'
• Marie Howe at YouTube

Books

• Marie Howe at Amazon.com

About

• "Poetic Justice: Marie Howe named New York Laureate" at Huffington Post
• Marie Howe Official Website.
• Interview: Bomb Magazine > #61, Fall 1997 > Marie Howe Interviewed by Victoria Redel
• Interviews