Interview: Marie Howe poet and teacher by Peter Menkin

Interview: Marie Howe poet and teacher by Peter Menkin

This interview with Marie Howe, American poet and teacher, is the first of a series of three different interviews with American poets. Note some poems by Marie from her new book â€œThe Kingdom of Ordinary Time,â€ are included in the Addendum to the interviewâ€”by permission of the poet, and of W.W. Norton publisher. The new book can be bought through the internet at this address. To contact the poet with an interest in a speaking engagement, go here. To write the poet, do so in care of her agent for speaking engagements whose email is here. Marie writes poetry of religious and spiritual kind, and other works most lovely and engaged in what one critic called the metaphysical. There is a lot of love in her work.

1. Marie I am so glad youâ€™ve agreed to an interview. Let me indulge myself by a quote from another interview you gave, for it offers a lovely poem you wrote mentioning Jesus Christ:

Marie: Sure, let me see. Itâ€™s funny; Jesus shows up in this book a lot. Thereâ€™s a poem here called â€œThe Star Marketâ€ that Iâ€™d love to read.

A lot of what is throughout this book is that Jesus said â€œthe kingdom of heaven is within you,â€ â€” What does that mean, the kingdom of heaven is within each of us? And if the kingdom of heaven is within us, who governs there? Really? How do we govern ourselves? Thatâ€™s another poem called â€œGovernment,â€ but maybe Iâ€™ll just read this poem called â€œThe Star Market.â€

â€œThe people Jesus loved were shopping at The Star Market yesterday. /An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout. /Breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps. //Even after his bags were packed he still stood, Breathing hard and /hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them: /Shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, As if The Star Market //had declared a day off for the able-bodied, And I had wandered in /with the rest of them, sour milk, bad meat, /looking for cereal and spring water. //Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, Looking for my lost car/ in the parking lot later, Stumbling among the people. Who would have/ been lowered into rooms by ropes, Who would have crept //out of caves, Or crawled from the corners of public baths. On their hands /and knees begging for mercy. //If I touch only the hem of his garment, One woman thought, I will be healed /Could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?â€

In a well liked online magazine of interviews with artists and such, Marie had this to say and though it is apparent in the interview of this writerâ€™s that starts below that Marie Howe has developed themes in her work, and in the maturity of her thought as a poet in that interview, the â€œBombâ€ interview enriches this article:
VR An interesting shift in the structures between The Good Thiefand What The Living Do is that you drop the voices of Biblical mythology and let actual people, the actual people of Marie Howeâ€™s life, enter the poems. Brothers, friends, lovers, grade school kids. It is a very brave leap to include all the names. The actual people are all that is needed for a mythology.
MH I love the characters in the Old and New Testaments, they were the stories of my childhood. I was one of those girls who read The Lives of the Saints in the bathtubâ€š and through those stories I tried to figure out how to live. Abrahamâ€™s decision, Noahâ€™s task, Mosesâ€™s stutter and exasperation, all helped me feel less embarrassed to be humanâ€”as did Mary Magdaleneâ€™s passionate love, Peterâ€™s impulsiveness, and Jesusâ€™s anger. Iâ€™m still in love with both Martha and Mary. Theyâ€™re the only two who show up in the new bookâ€”and why wouldnâ€™t they? Martha, the active: Mary, the contemplative. The wrestling aspects of a woman writer.
â€¦
MH I think time is a lie. John used to say to me, â€œMaria, itâ€™s not linear, itâ€™s circular.â€ I think I know what he meant. What the Christians call â€œThe Fullness of Time.â€ It feels truer to me....
Country USA
Manufacturer Church of England Newspaper, London
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2013-06-12
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Church of England Newspaper, London
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2013-06-12
Format	Kindle eBook