New and Selected Poems

One of NPR’s “Books We Love in 2024” and a California Review of Books Best Poetry of the Year

Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature

“[This book] makes a concise case for Howe's status as an essential poet.” —Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR

An indispensable collection of more than four decades of profound, luminous poetry from acclaimed poet Marie Howe.

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).

About the Author

Marie Howe is the former poet laureate of New York. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets, she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.