I had the great pleasure of meeting Marie Howe at the 2000 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, and just had to buy this collection after hearing her read some of the poems from it.
What the Living Do is primarily an homage to Howe's brother, John, who died of AIDS. There is a distinct progression of time through the collection, beginning with poems of Howe's youth and family life, continuing on through her maturing relationship with John, her life during the final stage of his illness, and culminating in a few poems about his death.
While there is a thread of melancholy that runs through the poems in this collection, they are certainly all poems celebrating life itself - "what the living do" - as the title poem proclaims. I can still hear Howe's voice reading that poem. The following lines from that poem still haunt me, and keep bringing me back to reread the poem in its entirety:
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.
Howe's poems speak intimately to their readers as if to a best friend or lover. But Howe never lapses into despair, despite the difficulties of her life revealed in glimpses through her poems. There is always a moment of beauty noted, a turn of phrase that inspires, like these lines from "Rochester, New York, July 1989":
. . . music would sometimes drift up through the floorboards,
and he might doze or wake a little or sleep,
and whoever was with him might lean back in the chair beside the bed
and not know it was Chopin,
but something soft and pretty -- maybe not even hear it,
not really, until it stopped
-- the way you know a scent from a flowering tree once you've passed it.
Howe's talent for expressing emotion in such raw, unpretentious, non-cliché poetry, truly makes her a poet you will want to read over and over.
