April 17 Tip: Explore Poet Marie Howe's Spiritual Poetry

April 17 Compassionate Living Tip from Interfaith Paths to Peace

Listen as Poet Marie Howe Reflects On The 'Living' After Loss

 Listen to Terri Gross's interview on NPR's Fresh Air 

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150495862/poet-marie-howe-reflects-on-the-living-after-loss?sc=17&f=1008

A few years after her younger brother John died from AIDS-related complications in 1989, poet Marie Howe wrote him a poem in the form of a letter. Called "What the Living Do," the poem is an elegiac description of loss, and of living beyond loss.

"When he died, it was a terrible loss to all of us," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "As you know, as everybody knows, you think, 'My life is changed so utterly I don't know how to live it anymore.' And then you find a way."

Howe's poem "What the Living Do" was recently anthologized in The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry. Howe discusses several of her poems, which deal with topics such as loss, love, spirituality, gender, sexuality and intimacy.

"Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die," says Howe. "The most mysterious aspect of being alive might be that — and poetry knows that."

Howe is the author of What the Living Do, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time and The Good Thief. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia and New York University.