Marie Howe's retrospective reviewed in The Guardian
American poet Marie Howe's retrospective What the Earth Seemed to Say reviewed in The Guardian of 2 November 2024; joint online launch 8 November, 7pm.
Launch reading by Marie Howe, Philip Gross and David Constantine
Marie Howe, Philip Gross and David Constantine launch their new books online on Friday 8 November, 7pm GMT. Watch live or later on our YouTube channel.
What we did to the earth, we did to our daughters
one after the other.
What we did to the trees, we did to our elders
stacked in their wheelchairs by the lunchroom door.
What we did to our daughters, we did to our sons
calling out for their mothers.
What we did to the trees, what we did to the earth
we did to our sons, to our daughters.
What we did to the cow, to the pig, to the lamb,
we did to the earth, butchered and milked it.
Few of us knew what the bird calls meant
or what the fires were saying.
We took of earth and took and took, and the earth
seemed not to mind,
until one of our daughters shouted: It was right
in front of you, right in front of your eyes
and you didn’t see.
The air turned red. The ocean grew teeth.
*
What the Living Do
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through
the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,
I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking.
Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living, I remember you.
*
Magdalene Afterwards
Remember the woman in the blue burka forced to kneel in the stadium
then shot in the head? That was me.
And I was the woman who secretly filmed it.
I was burned as a witch by the people in my own town
I was sent to the asylum at 16.
I was walking with my younger sister, looking for firewood,
when we saw the group of men approaching.
I’m the woman so in love with my husband
sometimes I wait in the kitchen chair and stare at the door.
I’m bored at the business meeting,
impatient with the Do Not Walk sign.
I’m parked in my wheelchair with the others in the hallway
—three hours till lunch, I don’t remember who it is
who leans down to kiss me.
I’ve forgotten my keys, dropped the dish, fallen down
the icy stoop.
I’m sitting on the bench with my bags, waiting for the bus.
I’m the woman in the black suit hailing a taxi.
I’m in prayer, in meditation, I’ve shaved my head, I wear robes
now instead of dresses.
I’ve entered the classroom and all the children call out my name at once.
I’m talking on my cell phone while driving.
I’m walking the goats out to the far field, gazing at the mountain
I’ve looked at every day of my life.
I never had children,
I bore nine living children and two dead ones
I adopted a girl in my late middle age
I’m cooking rice and beans
cooking dal
cooking lamb
reheating pizza
lighting the candles on the birthday cake
standing quietly by the window
still hungry for I don’t know what.
I want to see through the red bricks of the building across the street,
into the something else that almost gleams through the day.
Often, I’m lonely.
Sometimes a joy pours through me so immense.
*
One Day
One day the patterned carpet, the folding chairs,
the woman in the blue suit by the door examining her split ends,
all of it will go on without me. I’ll have disappeared,
as easily as a coin under lake water, and few to notice the difference
—a coin dropping into the darkening—
and West 4th Street, the sesame noodles that taste like
too much peanut butter lowered into the small white paper carton
—all of it will go on and on
and the I that caused me so much trouble? Nowhere
or grit thrown into the garden
or into the sticky bodies of several worms,
or just gone, stopped—like the Middle Ages,
like the coin Whitman carried in his pocket all the way to that basement
bar on Broadway that isn’t there any more.
Oh to be in Whitman’s pocket, on a cold winter day,
to feel his large warm hand slide in and out, and in again.
To be taken hold of by Walt Whitman! To be exchanged!
To be spent for something somebody wanted and drank and found delicious.
Contents List
New Poems (2023)
13 Prologue
15 Postscript
16 Practicing
18 The Saw, The Drill
19 Reincarnation
21 Another Theory of Time
22 Persephone
23 Persephone, in the meadow
24 Persephone and Demeter
25 Advent
26 What the Earth Seemed to Say, 2020
28 The Letter, 1968
29 The Forest
30 The Maples
31 Jack and the Moon
32 Before
33 Seventy
34 The Willows
35 Hymn
37 The Singularity
fromThe Good Thief (1987)
41 Part of Eve’s Discussion
42 Death, the Last Visit
43 What the Angels Left
45 The Meadow
47 The Split
50 What Belongs to Us
52 Gretel, from a sudden clearing
55 Keeping Still
56 Without Devotion
58 Sorrow
59 Mary’s Argument
60 Encounter
fromWhat the Living Do (1997)
65 The Boy
66 Sixth Grade
68 Buying the Baby
70 Practicing
71 The Attic
73 The Copper Beech
74 The Game
76 The Girl
77 The Dream
78 For Three Days
80 Just Now
81 A Certain Light
83 How Some of It Happened
85 The Last Time
86 The Promise
87 The Cold Outside
88 The Grave
90 The Gate
91 One of the Last Days
92 Late Morning
93 Watching Television
95 Separation
96 Prayer
98 Reunion
99 The Kiss
101 My Dead Friends
102 What the Living Do
104 Buddy
fromThe Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008)
107 The Star Market
108 Reading Ovid
110 After the Movie
112 Limbo
113 Easter
114 Marriage
115 Prayer
116 Courage
117 Why the Novel Is Necessary but Sometimes Hard to Read
119 Government
120 Poems from The Life of Mary
120 Sometimes the moon
121 Once or twice or three times
122 How you can’t move moonlight
123 You think this happened only once?
124 Annunciation
125 My Mother’s Body
126 Before the Fire
127 Fifty
128 Hurry
129 The Spell
131 The Snow Storm
132 Mary (Reprise)
fromMagdalene (2017)
135 Before the Beginning
136 Magdalene—The Seven Devils
139 On Men, Their Bodies
140 How the Story Started
141 Thorns
142 The Affliction
144 Magdalene: The Addict
145 The Landing
146 The Teacher
147 The Disciples
148 Magdalene on Gethsemane
149 Calvary
150 Low Tide, Late August
151 The Adoption: When the Girl Arrived
152 Conversation: Dualism
153 The News
155 Walking Home
156 The Map
157 Waiting at the River
158 Christmas Eve
159 Two Animals
160 The Teacher
161 Fourteen
162 Adaptation
164 October
165 Delivery
166 Magdalene at the Theopoetics Conference
167 One Day
168 Magdalene Afterwards