Driving out of town, I see him crossingthe Brooks Pharmacy parking lot, and rememberhow he would drop to his knees in the kitchenand press his face to my dress, his cheek flat againstmy belly as if he were listening for something.Somebody might be waiting for coffee in the living room,someone might be setting the dining room table, he’dplace his face under my dress and press his cheekagainst my belly and kneel there, without saying anything.How is it possible that I am allowed to see himlike this—walking quickly by the glass windows?—what he wears in the world without me,his hands swinging by his side, his cock quietin his jeans, his shirt coveringhis shoulder, his own tongue in his mouth.
Separation
Marie Howe
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“Separation” from New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe.
Published by W. W. Norton on April 02, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Marie Howe.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Marie Howe was born in 1950 in Rochester, New York. She worked as a newspaper reporter and teacher before receiving her MFA from Columbia University in 1983.
Howe is the author of New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2024), winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Magdalene (W. W. Norton, 2017), which was long-listed 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 Howe’s brother, John, who died of AIDS in 1989. In 1995, she coedited the anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (Persea, 1995).
Characterized by “a 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 Howe’s four previous collections—including What the Living Do (1997), a haunting archive of personal loss, and the National Book Award–longlisted Magdalene (2017), a spiritual and sensual exploration of contemporary womanhood—and contains twenty new poems. Whether speaking in the voice of the goddess Persephone or thinking about aging while walking the dog, Howe is “a light-bearer, an extraordinary poet of our human sorrow and ordinary joy” (Dorianne Laux).
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