Magdalene : poems

Magdalene Poems

Marie Howe, 1950-

Book - 2017

Magdalene imagines the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as a woman who embodies the spiritual and sensual, alive in a contemporary landscapehailing a cab, raising a child, listening to news on the radio. Between facing the traumas of her past and navigating daily life, the narrator of Magdalene yearns for the guidance of her spiritual teacher, a Christ figure, whose death she continues to grieve. Erotic, spirited, and searching for meaning, she is a woman striving to be the subject of her own life, fully human and alive to the sacred in the mortal world.

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Subjects
American poetry > 21st century.
Poetry.
Genres
Poetry
Published
New York : W. W. Norton & Company [2017]
Language
English
Main Author
Marie Howe, 1950- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
95 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780393285307
  • Before the Beginning
  • Magdalene-The Seven Devils
  • On Men, Their Bodies
  • How the Story Started
  • Thorns
  • The Affliction
  • The Split
  • What I Did Wrong
  • Magdalene on Romance
  • Magdalene: The Addict
  • Magdalene and the Interior Life
  • The Landing
  • Magdalene: The Woman Taken in Adultery
  • Magdalene, the Next Day
  • The Teacher
  • The Disciples
  • Magdalene on Gethsemane
  • Calvary
  • Magdalene Afterwards
  • Low Tide, Late August
  • The Adoption: When the Girl Arrived
  • The Girl at 3
  • Magdalene on Surrender
  • The Anima Alone
  • The News
  • Christmas Eve
  • Listening
  • Waiting at the River
  • The Teacher
  • Conversation: Dualism
  • Walking Home
  • Magdalene: Her Dream of Integration
  • Fourteen
  • After the Funeral
  • Adaptation
  • The Map
  • The Visit
  • Two Animals
  • October
  • Delivery
  • Magdalene at the Grave
  • What the Silence Says
  • Magdalene at the Theopoetics Conference
  • One Day
Review by Library Journal Review

In her fourth collection, former New York poet laureate Howe (The Kingdom of Ordinary Time) creates a poignant portrait of contemporary womanhood through the persona of Mary Magdalene. Several poems evoke the figure of Magdalene's teacher or master, a nod to New Testament traditions, but the power of Howe's Magdalene is in the adoption of the mask of a woman neither virgin nor whore. Howe's style convincingly evokes the hesitations and shifting rhythms of conversation and of thought itself; the influence of C.K. Williams and C.D. Wright, with their appetite for epiphanies in a vernacular mode and their long, loping lines, is apparent. Howe has a distinctive acrid humor, and her best poems are apt to awaken a smile as well as bitter self-recognition. The first substantial poem in the volume, "Magdalene-The Seven Devils" has already been passed approvingly from hand to hand since its first appearance in American Poetry Review, and small wonder: it is the perfect digest of Howe at her best, a litany of flaws, neuroses, and gestures of bad faith certain to mirror the experience of many readers. VERDICT This newest collection aptly demonstrates the particular strengths of Howe's wry, bittersweet talent. Highly recommended for all poetry collections-Graham Christian, formerly with Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, MA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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