The Sacred Ordinary: A Profile of Marie Howe

In the world of contemporary American poetry, few voices possess the quiet, shattering authority of Marie Howe. To read her is to step into a room where the secular has been scrubbed until it shines with the sacred. Her work is a testament to the power of radical presence—the belief that if we look long enough at the most mundane objects, they will eventually reveal the infinite. Born in Rochester, New York, in 1950, Howe did not begin her life in poetry with the typical precocity of a child prodigy. In fact, she didn’t start writing seriously until she was thirty years old, having previously worked as a newspaper reporter and a teacher. It was the legendary poet Stanley Kunitz, her mentor at Columbia University, who recognized her "abundant inner life" and helped shepherd her debut collection, The Good Thief, into the world in 1988.

While The Good Thief won the National Poetry Series, it was Howe’s second book, What the Living Do, published in 1998, that cemented her place in the American canon. The collection is a harrowing, luminous elegy for her brother John, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1989. His death didn't just break her heart; it fundamentally altered her aesthetic. She moved away from the complex metaphors of her early work toward a style characterized by what critics call "radical simplicity." She began to write in a plainspoken, documentary style that felt less like a performance and more like a conversation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the title poem, "What the Living Do," where she addresses her late brother directly about the messy, frustrating details of survival. She writes:

"Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of."

Howe’s innovation lies in this very intersection: the "metaphysics of the kitchen." She suggests that the divine is not found in high-flown abstractions, but in the "wobbly bricks" of a sidewalk or the act of buying a hairbrush. The poem concludes with a moment of startling self-recognition that has become one of the most famous passages in modern poetry:

"But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless: I am living. I remember you."

Following the success of What the Living Do, Howe continued her investigation of the spiritual and the domestic in The Kingdom of Ordinary Time and Magdalene. In the latter, she performs a daring act of persona-poetry, reclaiming the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene and placing her in a contemporary landscape. This Magdalene is not a distant saint, but a woman who hails cabs, loses her keys, and struggles with the "seven devils" of modern anxiety. In the poem "Magdalene—The Seven Devils," Howe lists these demons with a wry, heartbreaking accuracy:

"The first was that I was very busy. The second—I was different from you: whatever happened to you could not happen to me, not like that. The third was I believed I could save myself. The fourth was I thought everything that went wrong was my fault. The fifth was I thought I would never be whole. The sixth was I thought I was more important than anyone else. The seventh was I thought I was less important than anyone else."

If you are new to Howe’s work, the specific poem to read first is undoubtedly "What the Living Do." It serves as the perfect entry point because it encapsulates her entire philosophy: that grief does not end, but rather becomes the lens through which we finally see the beauty of our own flawed, breathing lives. It is a poem that offers a way to inhabit the "now" without looking away from the "no longer."

Today, Marie Howe’s influence is vast. A former Poet Laureate of New York State and the winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for her New and Selected Poems, she continues to serve as the Poet-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. She often speaks of poetry as a form of prayer or a "spell" that can hold the knowledge of our mortality. For the poetry lover, Howe remains a "light-bearer," someone who reminds us that even when the sink is clogged and the sky is gray, we are participating in the miracle of being alive.