Marie Howe

Marie Howe
File:Marie howe 0396.JPG
Born	1950 Rochester, New York
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Windsor;
Genre	Poetry
Notable awards	Guggenheim Fellowship; National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

Marie Howe (born 1950 Rochester, New York) is an American poet. Her most recent poetry collection is The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W. Norton, 2008). In August 2012 she was named the State Poet for New York.

Early life

Howe is the eldest girl of nine children. She attended Sacred Heart Convent School and earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Windsor.

Career

She worked briefly as a newspaper reporter in Rochester and as a high school English teacher in Massachusetts. Howe did not devote serious attention to writing poetry until she turned 30. At the suggestion of an instructor in a writers' workshop, Howe applied to and was accepted at Columbia University where she studied with Stanley Kunitz and received her M.F.A. in 1983.

She has taught writing at Tufts University and Warren Wilson College. She is presently on the writing faculties at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and New York University.

Her first book, The Good Thief, was selected by Margaret Atwood as the winner of the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series. In 1998, she published her best-known book of poems, What the Living Do; the title poem in the collection is a haunting lament for her brother with the plain-spoken last line: "I am living, I remember you."

Howe's brother John died of an AIDS-related illness in 1989. "John’s living and dying changed my aesthetic entirely," she has said. In 1995, Howe co-edited, with Michael Klein, a collection of essays, letters, and stories entitled In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic.

Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, and Harvard Review. Her honors include National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellowships.

Honors and awards

• 1998 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1992 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

Published works

Poetry Collections

• The Good Thief (Persea Books, 1988) ISBN 9780892551279

Anthologies

• In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic, (ed., with Michael Klein, Persea Books, 1995) ISBN 9780892552085

Sources

• Library of Congress Online Catalog > Marie Howe

External links

• Marie Howe's Official Website
• Author's Booking Agency > Blue Flower Arts > Marie Howe Author Page
• Poem: The New Yorker > January 14, 2008 > The Star Market by Marie Howe
• Poem: A Little Poetry > How Some of It Happened by Marie Howe
• Personal Essay: O: The Oprah Magazine > Memoir by Marie Howe: Not to Look Away
• Video: PBS > Poetry Everywhere > Marie Howe Reading The Gate
• Video: Marie Howe Reading at the NYS Writers Institute in 2008 on YouTube
• Interview: Bomb Magazine > #61, Fall 1997 > Marie Howe Interviewed by Victoria Redel
• Poet Marie Howe On 'What The Living Do' After Loss, NPR, October 19, 2011