What the Earth Seemed to Say
New & Selected Poems
Published on 21. November 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-1-78037-724-7 (ISBN)
Description
What the Earth Seemed to Say is a powerful collection of more than three decades of profound, luminous poetry from one of America's most daring and courageous poets.
With its 'radical simplicity and seriousness of purpose, along with a fearless interest in autobiography and its tragedies and redemptions' (Matthew Zapruder, New York Times Magazine), Marie Howe's poetry transforms penetrating observations of everyday life into sacred, humane miracles. This essential volume draws from each of her four previous collections - including Magdalene (2017), a spiritual and sensual exploration of contemporary womanhood, and What the Living Do (1997), a haunting archive of personal loss - and contains more than fifteen new poems. Whether speaking in the voice of the goddess Persephone or thinking about ageing while walking the dog, Howe is 'a light-bearer, an extraordinary poet of our human sorrow and ordinary joy' (Dorianne Laux).
With its 'radical simplicity and seriousness of purpose, along with a fearless interest in autobiography and its tragedies and redemptions' (Matthew Zapruder, New York Times Magazine), Marie Howe's poetry transforms penetrating observations of everyday life into sacred, humane miracles. This essential volume draws from each of her four previous collections - including Magdalene (2017), a spiritual and sensual exploration of contemporary womanhood, and What the Living Do (1997), a haunting archive of personal loss - and contains more than fifteen new poems. Whether speaking in the voice of the goddess Persephone or thinking about ageing while walking the dog, Howe is 'a light-bearer, an extraordinary poet of our human sorrow and ordinary joy' (Dorianne Laux).
Reviews / Votes
To appreciate Howe's work, I want you to imagine poetry that's been stripped back to its barest elements, yet it remains poetic and has a mood that carries us; a poetry of direct statement and simple language that never quite feels direct or simple. -- Daljit Nagra * BBC Radio 4 Extra, on What the Earth Seemed to Say, his Poetry Extra Book of the Month * Howe's poems carry an emotional depth and transcendent simplicity. There is a simultaneous earthliness and spirituality in her musings on the metaphysical revelations of the divine, the sacred and the eternal. -- Jennifer Lee Tsai * The Guardian (Poetry Books of the Month) * What the Earth Seemed to Say: New & Selected Poems by Marie Howe is a compelling compendium of the poet's piercingly steady gaze at the painful truths of our lives with poems rich in forthright lyric insight. -- Paul Perry * Sunday Independent(Poetry Books of the Year 2024) * There is a remarkable evenness of tone in the American poet, Marie Howe's, What the Earth Seemed to Say, which is Howe's first book in the UK but her fifth overall. [...] Howe's gifts with narrative, with a kind of reportage, if you like, means that the psychological narrative comes across more clearly. -- Ian Pople * The High Windiow * What the Earth Seemed to Say is a substantial selection of work, ranging from The Good Thief, published in the 1980s, to a group of recent poems from 2023. Howe is a writer well known for exploring Christian themes from innovative modern-dress perspectives, as in her 2017 collection Magdalene. -- Carol Rumens * The Guardian, Poem of the Week * Marie Howe's poetry is luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life. Her long, deep-breathing lines address the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred. -- Stanley Kunitz Marie Howe's poems are remarkable for their focused, intense, and haunting lyricism. Her poems characteristically unfold through a series of luminous particulars that gather emotional power as they delve into the complexities of the human heart. Her poems are acclaimed for writing through loss with verve, but they also find the miraculous in the ordinary and transform quotidian incidents into enduring revelation. -- Arthur Sze Each book of Marie Howe's is a singular accomplishment, but none is as wildly alive as this.... Howe sweeps up a life and fixes it on the page, and stands here before us, the stunned and grateful witness of all that's taken and granted by love and time. -- Mark Doty * on Magdalene *More details
Edition
Paperback original
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
278 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-724-7 (9781780377247)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Marie Howe is the author of five books of poetry. Her retrospective, What the Earth Seemed to Say: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2024), draws on four collections published in the US: Magdalene (W.W. Norton, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W. Norton, 2009), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; What the Living Do (W.W. Norton, 1998); and The Good Thief (Persea Books, 1988), which was selected by Margaret Atwood for the 1987 National Poetry Series. What the Living Do is in many ways an elegy for Marie Howe's brother John, who died from AIDS in 1989. She also co-edited the anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (Persea Books, 1995).
Born in 1950 in Rochester, New York, Marie Howe worked as a newspaper reporter and teacher before receiving her MFA from Columbia University in 1983. Stanley Kunitz selected her for a Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1988. Her other awards include the 2015 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, as well as grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Bunting Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as the first Poet Laureate of New York State from 2012 to 2014, and is poet in residence at The Cathedral Church of St John the Divine in New York City. She has taught at Tufts University and Dartmouth College, among other institutions. In 2018 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.
Born in 1950 in Rochester, New York, Marie Howe worked as a newspaper reporter and teacher before receiving her MFA from Columbia University in 1983. Stanley Kunitz selected her for a Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1988. Her other awards include the 2015 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, as well as grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Bunting Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as the first Poet Laureate of New York State from 2012 to 2014, and is poet in residence at The Cathedral Church of St John the Divine in New York City. She has taught at Tufts University and Dartmouth College, among other institutions. In 2018 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.
Content
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
from The 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
from What 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
from The 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)
from Magdalene (2017)
135 Before the Beginning
136 Magdalene-The Seven Devils
139 On Men, Their Bodies
140 How the Story Started
141 Thorns
142 The Af?iction
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
171 Acknowledgements
172 Index of Titles and First Lines
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
from The 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
from What 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
from The 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)
from Magdalene (2017)
135 Before the Beginning
136 Magdalene-The Seven Devils
139 On Men, Their Bodies
140 How the Story Started
141 Thorns
142 The Af?iction
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
171 Acknowledgements
172 Index of Titles and First Lines