Marie Howe

Contemplates the death of a brother and the things that separate the living from the dead and the present from the past.

What the Living Do: Poems

A new volume of poetic works by the author of What the Living Do explores the intersection between secular and sacred aspects of life, where everyday experiences from caring for an ailing parent to helping a child at the playground have both miraculous and mundane qualities. 10,000 first printing.

The Kingdom of Ordinary Time

Magdalene imagines the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as a woman who embodies the spiritual and sensual, alive in a contemporary landscape--hailing a cab, raising a child, listening to news on the radio. Between facing the traumas of her past and navigating daily life, the narrator of Magdalene yearns for the guidance of her spiritual teacher, a Christ figure, whose death she continues to grieve. Erotic, spirited, and searching for meaning, she is a woman striving to be the subject of her own life, fully human and alive to the sacred in the mortal world.

Poems

Magdalene

A volume of poetic works explores the intersection between secular and sacred aspects of life, where everyday experiences from caring for an ailing parent to helping a child at the playground have both miraculous and mundane qualities. Reprint. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist.

The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems

The heralded debut collection of poems by the author of What the Living Do (Norton, 1997). Selected by Margaret Atwood as a winner in the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series, this unique collection was the first sounding of a deeply authentic voice. Howe's early writings concern relationship, attachment, and loss, in a highly original search for personal transcendence. Many of the thirty-four poems in The Good Thief appeared in such prestigious journals and periodicals as The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Agni Review, and The Partisan Review.

The Good Thief

Michael Klein

American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic

In the Company of My Solitude

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize: “Thought-provoking, poignant, brutal, amusing, and always beautiful.”—Elizabeth Berg Hurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders: what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven? And how does one live in Ordinary Time—during those apparently unmiraculous periods of everyday trouble and joy?

Eric Pankey

Kansas City Art Institute

The Artist, the Poet : to Speak with a Vision, to See with a Lilt

Lilt

Luis J. Rodriguez

Richard Blanco

Over twenty-five years ago two Americans, Dr. Diana Frade and her husband, Episcopalian Bishop Leo Frade, founded Our Little Roses Home for Girls in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Until then abandoned girls were often given to prisoners since no such homes existed. Now Our Little Roses has some 60 rescued or orphaned girls in a city once considered the "murder capital of the world." Poverty and violence--especially in the past 25 years attributed to deported Los Angeles-based gangs--has affected the lives of all in the poorest Spanish-speaking country of the hemisphere. Unaccompanied youth from Honduras were among the 100,000 refugees, which also included children and youth from El Salvador and Guatemala, arriving to the United States between 2013 and 2015. American poet and Episcopalian priest Spencer Reece spent two years at Our Little Roses teaching poetry to girls who have lost family due to poverty, violence, and disasters like Hurricane Mitch that struck Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala in 1998, resulting in 22,000 people dead or missing, 2.7 million homeless, and $6 billion in damages. This book has essays by Reece and Luis J. Rodríguez as a backdrop to the girls' voices, and a foreword and afterword by poets Marie Howe and Richard Blanco. Luis and his wife Trini, a poet, teacher, and indigenous healer, also helped teach at Our Little Roses and the Holy Family Bilingual School inside a walled compound in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Here poetry and stories transcend the pain of loss that often goes unexpressed. Here poetry serves as a beacon of hope and inspiration in the shadows. Here poetry can save lives.

Marie Howe

Books

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