The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems [Hardcover]

Marie Howe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2008

An anticipated new volume from Marie Howe whose “poetry is luminous, intense, eloquent, rooted in abundant inner life” (Stanley Kunitz).

Hurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders: what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven? And how does one live in Ordinary Time—during those periods that are not apparently miraculous?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. SignatureReviewed by Brenda ShaughnessyMarie Howe's books of poetry materialize once a decade and are big news and cause for celebration. Both of her previous collections moved me to tears and have continued to move me. Reading her third is like finally having a very long thirst quenched. Howe's debut, The Good Thief, contains a poem, Part of Eve's Discussion, which remains one of the most breathtaking out-of-body experiences in contemporary poetry: ...when it occurs to you/ your car could spin/.../ it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only/ all the time. When I teach poetry classes, this is what I start with: it makes young poets want to write. Then there are the rapt, anguished poems about all-too-corporeal experiences in What the Living Do, which struggles to reckon with a beloved brother's death from AIDS as well as a rough-and-tumble childhood. Howe finds the flash point of illumination in the chaos of grief and murky memory. This book has become a classic text in coping with life, love and loss. How do we save each other, or how do we watch helplessly? How can we live with our memories or with losing them, or each other? Howe is the rare poet who offers answers to these questions. This third book unites and develops all the strength and beauty of the previous two. Metaphysical aspects of Thief find advanced life forms in mind-benders like Limbo (Do I have an I?/ One says to another... ) and Easter. a brilliant short poem about reanimation (And the whole body was too small. Imagine/ the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill). The earthbound qualities of Living also find new form here: political, indeed global concerns are posited with signature clarity, expressing, through simple observation and empathy, the hope for more humane systems. A cycle of heartbreaking poems about motherhood, called Life of Mary, looks back on the speaker's own dead mother, while other poems look straight into the moment, joyfully, reverently and always with a pause for reflection and amazement, with her daughter.Howe is a careful and soulful alchemist. She makes metaphor matter and material metaphysical. She becomes magic with her transforming perspective that is part mother, part muscle, part music, part mind. This book has the amazing thing that Howe always seems to pull off: the miracle. I saw it./ It was the thing and spirit both: the real/ world: evident, invisible. (Mar.)Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of Interior with Sudden Joy (FSG, 1999) and the forthcoming Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon, 2008), which won the 2007 James Laughlin Award. She is poetry editor of Tin House magazine.
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From Booklist

The speaker in Howe’s pleasant, somewhat scattered new collection of poems is a woman of around 50 trolling the supermarket aisles, going to movies, parenting her daughter, doing a spot of reading here and there—living, in short, an ordinary life and wondering what it means. At times there’s a hint of dread it might not mean anything, or at least nothing beyond its surfaces. More often, there’s a quiet determination to detect, define, describe what’s significant in an existence that might seem largely mundane. Still, she doesn’t find much. Howe’s is not a poetry of transcendence, grounded instead in the muck of the stubbornly material. Even its occasional approaches to religious themes—including “Easter,” in which the poet imagines Jesus’ spirit reinhabiting his formerly dead body, and a sequence called “Poems from the Life of Mary”—are strikingly free of metaphysical trappings. What’s left is a gentle sifting, an eye avid for the glint of gold, and a resignation that it might never come. --Kevin Nance

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (March 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393041999
• ISBN-13: 978-0393041996
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,064,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ordinary becomes Extaordinary, March 3, 2008

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Poetry lover (Saratoga, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems (Hardcover)

Howe's poems are suffused with a sense of light and longing that is tangible. Stunning in their depth and for the sharpness of their turns. At once as simple and complex as life and oh so rich. These are the kind of poems you will want to read again and again discovering more about the poems and yourself with each reading. Highly recommended.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another masterpiece from Marie Howe, March 26, 2008

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Kevin Pal (The Suburbs of Detroit) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems (Hardcover)

I have had the pleasure of attending a poetry workshop taught by Ms. Howe, during which I came to know her work. Over the course of three summer days, she stuck to her line of "Poetry is telling something to someone" during her coaching, and that same belief shows up in her work. In Marie Howe's poetry, you can see countless moments when the spiritual, the beyond, touches the everyday. And isn't that the task of poetry? To bridge the gap? The death of a mother, being shocked into a realization by a child's continual questioning - these are things we all experience, and Ms. Howe captures the moments in both subtle and intense ways with her words. An excellent collection of poetry and follow-up to her award-winning What the Living Do. I just wish the gap between publications hadn't been ten years!

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Underwhelming, August 14, 2008

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P. L. McNamara "Peter L. McNamara" (St. Petersburg, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems (Hardcover)

Marie Howe's "Kingdom of Ordinary Time" suggests that poetry of ordinary experience elevated only slightly by (often predictable) turns of irony may have run its course. These poems don't resonate as does the best of Howe's earlier work; only the occasional poem invites a second reading. I looked forward keenly, but found myself let down. There will be an audience for this collection since Howe handles language so skillfully, but there is little here to startle the reader into enthusiasm.