What the Living Do, Marie Howe
What the Living Do, Marie Howe
2 Rating(s)
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What the Living Do
Poems

Author: Marie Howe

Narrator: Marie Howe

Unabridged: 1 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/08/2024


Synopsis

Informed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive. What the Living Do reflects ““a new form of confessional poetry, one shared to some degree by other women poets such as Sharon Olds and Jane Kenyon. Unlike the earlier confessional poetry of Plath, Lowell, Sexton et al., Howe’s writing is not so much a moan or a shriek as a song. It is a genuinely feminine form…a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation”” (Boston Globe).

This audio edition of What the Living Do is beautifully read by the author. Produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Cover photograph: Song of Sentient Beings (1134) by Bill Jacobson (1994), used with permission. ©1998 Marie Howe §

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paltia on December 06, 2019

I didn’t read these poems. I experienced them. It was like meeting someone and knowing, instinctively knowing, they understand. Howe’s words took me by the hand and were so affecting they went straight to my heart. She takes you in so many directions. You come to a crossroad and she gently suggests......more

Goodreads review by Tony on March 23, 2008

Marie Howe's second book is an immensely moving book about the death of her brother by AIDS. It is plain-spoken, narrative, intense. Instead of giving a review, I'm going to paste in one of Howe's poems and an excerpt from an interview with her that really gets at the heart of the book. The Boy My old......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on October 18, 2019

I cherish these poems. Howe makes love and loss specific, real, unadorned, ordinary, and beautiful. So many gems in here: "What the Living Do," my favorite poem, alongside "How Some of It Happened," "The Last Time,""The Grave," "One of the Last Days," "Watching Television,""Separation," "Prayer," "T......more

Goodreads review by Peter on August 13, 2011

"What the Living Do" manages to give me an unsentimental but still deeply felt picture of the pain of living beyond loss. The immediate occasion for these poems is the death of several friends and family members over what seems, in the context of this books at least, a relatively short period of tim......more