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312th out of 327 books
—
481 voters
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems
by
Marie Howe
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?
Hardcover, 80 pages
Published
March 17th 2008
by W. W. Norton & Company
(first published March 10th 2008)
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Her language is very ordinary and carries in it a very subtle surprise, especially when it does its delicate wondering about the character of Mary, giving her a halo of ordinariness. Interesting how nonspecific much of the language is -- but the unspecifics are well placed so that they're open but not vague, like that line in Bishop's "Fish," in the midst of such incredible specificity, when she describes the fishes eyes: "It was more like the tipping/ of an object toward the light." Like the la...more
I still liked some of the poems in this, but the book as a whole is not as good as her other two.
I thought the best ones were about her daughter. Some of the poems in this book were very focused and strong, but most of the poems were not as intense as her poetry usually is.
A lot of the poems would start somewhere and end somewhere else. Great poems take the reader on a trip, but a lot of these poems brought me somewhere and I didn't know how I got there, or how it was related to the beginning....more
I thought the best ones were about her daughter. Some of the poems in this book were very focused and strong, but most of the poems were not as intense as her poetry usually is.
A lot of the poems would start somewhere and end somewhere else. Great poems take the reader on a trip, but a lot of these poems brought me somewhere and I didn't know how I got there, or how it was related to the beginning....more
I'm studying modern women poets and what better teacher than the work of Marie Howe. I admire how she is able to re-examine religious and spiritual concepts that I learned as a child and give them back to me refined, renewed, and refurbished. Some of the poems ("The Massacre," for instance) address brutal subject matter with such intimacy that my breath quickened and a surge of adrenaline pumped through my blood. I loved "What the Woman Said" and "Hurry," poems that are direct hits regarding per...more
While many of these poems start with observation of the every day world, that is just the starting point for the journey they take into the life of the spirit. The turns of thought and language of some of these poems made me shiver.
"The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday./An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout/ breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps." "The Star Market"
"This is the life you have written," the novel tells us. "What happ...more
"The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday./An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout/ breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps." "The Star Market"
"This is the life you have written," the novel tells us. "What happ...more
Marie Howe's work always challenges me to read carefully. I liked her first two books, am always surprised by the way she writes poems, decidedly poems, but with a simplicity that makes them so easy to read. She has a gift for ending a poem in a way that illuminate the rest of it.
In WHAT THE LiVING DO she writes about the death of her brother by aids. This one is more general. One of my favorites, a poem entitled "Easter," where Howe muses on coming back to life, Jesus is the example as the blo...more
In WHAT THE LiVING DO she writes about the death of her brother by aids. This one is more general. One of my favorites, a poem entitled "Easter," where Howe muses on coming back to life, Jesus is the example as the blo...more
This third collection of poems by Marie Howe reflects and builds a little on the voice she cultivated in first two books, but it rarely rises to their level of authenticity. Howe is still a master of long, limber lines that find the music in storytelling and she uses this strength to great advantage in the collection's best moments ("Would You Rather," "After the Movie," "What We Would Give Up" and "Hurry"), which lean even more into prose poem territory than anything she's written before. It's...more
Maybe it was because I just finished reading One Secret Thing by Sharon Olds (which was pretty much on the exact same topic), but I was left wanting more... and not in a good way. I'm a fan of Marie Howe's writing. The Good Thief is one of my favorite books... but I felt like each poem was just brushing at the surface of things and was hesitant. I never felt like the poems were really getting at anything important... which I feel bad saying considering the delicate topic. However, I am going to...more
Wow. I didn't think it was possible for me to feel as strongly about this book as I did about her previous one, What The Living Do, which is one of my poetry all-time faves. But I ended up just loving it, and appreciating (all over again) the mixture of the everyday (giving her kid a bath, buying bananas) and the spiritual (for lack of a better world) that dwells inside the quotidian and which is sometimes visible, sometimes not. The way the poems move between the two, and between a chatty sort...more
The cover of Howe’s third collection of poems is decorated with a watercolor by her daughter Grace Yi-Nan Howe and one Alex Ross. The painting has a fried egg of a sun shining over a landscape of green, purple, brown and red triangles and squares, with what look like letter T’s and I’s providing fences and trees, and maybe a couple of A’s. It’s a pleasing, vibrant, child’s view landscape threatened by a fury of scrabbled colors, reds, brown, grey filling the painting’s right side like a storm. M...more
I would often find myself groovin right along, totally loving a poem, and then get to an ending which "explains" or "wraps up" the poem in such a way that kind of killed my buzz. (Off the tip of my head, "Would You Rather" comes to mind-- just wish it trusted the last images to do the work, rather than kind of explain to me that I have these choices...)
Loved the Mary series, though.
I gather from the other reviews that her other books may be stronger, so I'll definitely come back to her.
Loved the Mary series, though.
I gather from the other reviews that her other books may be stronger, so I'll definitely come back to her.
Thin but good. She was profiled on NPR. I'd like to read some others. They are very approachable poems - these are encased in Ordinary Time - the calendar weeks that fall between Easter and Advent. She often writes in couplets, which made me realize how much easier they were to understand - might need to try that. Lots of funny relational poems - poignant, scathing, sad.
This was a luminous book that I got serendipitously when my great aunt was dying. There is nothing like poetry that is a balm to the soul, and Howe's work did that for me. I found out about it through a blog called something like Life-Saving Poetry. Well, yes, some of the poems in this collection definitely felt that way to me.
Most captivating collection of poetry I have experienced in quite some time. I throughly enjoyed her poems regarding so many diverse topics and the unconventional way she presents them.
I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone even semi-interested in poetry or creative writing.
I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone even semi-interested in poetry or creative writing.
I really liked some of these poems, but some seemed kind of flat, which makes me ask, "Why is this poetry?" Some of it sounds like thoughts about what just happened...as in "I just went to the store and at the store" etc...not very poetic.
But I'm looking forward to talking about it in book club.
But I'm looking forward to talking about it in book club.
Jun 12, 2008
Heather
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone with half a brain and half a heart.
"My life was a story, dry as pages. Seems like he should have known/enough to like them even lightly with his thumb/ But he didn't. /And I have to admit I didn't much like the idea/of telling him how."
What an awesome heartwrenching collection of poems. Marie Howe is the single most amazing contemporary poet working today. I say that with the assertion that only the most uneducated can have. I say that because I don't know enough, I only know that it is true. Did I love this as much as "What the...more
What an awesome heartwrenching collection of poems. Marie Howe is the single most amazing contemporary poet working today. I say that with the assertion that only the most uneducated can have. I say that because I don't know enough, I only know that it is true. Did I love this as much as "What the...more
I came to this collection through reading one of its poems, "Prayer", online. It's a marvelous poem, an honest take on our conflicted feelings about praying. "Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important / calls for my attention -- the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage / I need to buy for the trip." But most of the other poems left me puzzled about where they were coming from (or headed). Granted, I haven't read much contemporary poetry and I'm willing to...more
Its been ages since I've found a new (to me) poet that I've loved this much. Really lovely work, short, brisk, heartbreaking. I'm finding myself tempted to rush through, knowing I will re-read the poems in this book again and again.
Favorites:
"Prayer," "The Snow Storm," and "Mary (Reprise)
Favorite line - From "After the Movie"
"Then I think, Do I love Michael enough to allow him to think these things of me even if he's not thinking them?"
Ponder that one.
"Prayer," "The Snow Storm," and "Mary (Reprise)
Favorite line - From "After the Movie"
"Then I think, Do I love Michael enough to allow him to think these things of me even if he's not thinking them?"
Ponder that one.
I stumbled across this at a used book store at an airport, of all places. I was intrigued by the title, liturgically minded as I sometimes can be. There are several wonderful poems, in particular one in which she talks about the people Jesus loved being at the supermarket, kind of annoying in all of their humanity. I will have to look into her other works.
I found a lot to love here. Definitely want to read more by this author.
Favorites:
Prayer: "My days and nights pour through me like complaints / and become a story I forgot to tell."
Courage: "What happens is that when you get older you / get braver. / Then he pauses and looks at me, Are you brave?"
Non-violence: "Justice before love, I'd say years later. What I meant was justice was love."
What the Woman Said: "I was watching me, and I was someone else who / looked like she was having a good time."...more
Favorites:
Prayer: "My days and nights pour through me like complaints / and become a story I forgot to tell."
Courage: "What happens is that when you get older you / get braver. / Then he pauses and looks at me, Are you brave?"
Non-violence: "Justice before love, I'd say years later. What I meant was justice was love."
What the Woman Said: "I was watching me, and I was someone else who / looked like she was having a good time."...more
again, some really good poems, delightful lines. As a whole though, it was mildly disappointing. Her bad ones are never terribly painful though, and I am easily captivated by her voice. T
I loved What the Living Do and The Good Thief. I was so excited to begin this book, but it definitely fell short of my expectations.
After reading "What the Living Do," this one seemed a little bit of a let down. There were definitely some good poems in this, but others seemed like they were just strange anecdotes meant to be amusing. A little too light for my tastes.
First poetry collection I've read in a while. More mystical, less intense than Howe's previous book, What the Living Do. She's still one of my favorite poets.
Another book that I came to through browsing actual books on actual shelves. I wouldn't have picked up Marie Howe but--hey!--I did. And she made me cry in the bathtub and that's usually a good thing and it was.
Haunting, disturbing, enchanting. All of the above. This is a really good volume of poetry.
Underwhelming unfortunately because I've do admired her earlier work. This seems less a collection of verse and more an assemblage of recalled conversations.
Poems worth reading periodically. I will come back to them again after today.
Wow. And that doesn't even come close.
Loved "The Star Market" and a few others.
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May 24, 2013 05:15am