From The Kingdom of Ordinary Time
On today’s “episode” we are joined by the lovely Maggie Boyd Hare!
Maggie is my celebrity crush: incredibly gifted poet, lyric essayist, editor, and designer (Check that website. Maggie, feel free to renovate my writer-site any time). I’m honored to hear their recitations of the equally wonderful Marie Howe.
When asked “What interests you in Howe’s poetry?” Maggie responded:
“I love the way Marie Howe’s syntax works. She’s matter of fact and often plain, but she really looks. There’s something about her particular music that speaks to me every time. I also love her obsession with religion that also is uninterested in claiming a religion or ideology—like she can’t not think about God, but is also able to let it be whatever it is wherever it is. A kind of happy co-existence.”
Maggie first encountered Howe through this On-Being podcast.
In their description, they write, “Poetry is [Howe’s] exuberant and open-hearted way into the words and the silences we live by.”
That mane; a beautiful lion eating you alive, one simple sentence at a time.
Here’s Maggie’s rendition of October:
I could listen to this every day 4ever!! Shared this with my Intro CRW students, who’ve accused me of being “obsessed with death.” This didn’t help me beat the allegations, but some of those same students said “Hm…we like this.” Howe’s voice eases some reluctance to grapple. She portrays an awareness of mortality as necessary but soft.
Then it comes to me: Yes I’ll die,
so will everyone, so has everyone.
It’s what we have in common.
Here is Maggie reading The Gate:
Marie’s brother John Howe died in 1989 of an AIDS-related illness and features heavily in the collection What the Living Do. In 1995, she co-edited a collection of essays, letters, and stories called In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. She was quoted as saying, “John’s living and dying changed my aesthetic entirely.”
Maggie reading the #iconic What the Living Do:
One of four adorable illustrations by Anna-Laura.
I first encountered What the Living Do circulating Tumblr in the 2010s, before I was remotely well-read, but this poem never fails to bowl me over. Exposure to “more complicated” poets only reinforces Howe’s essential elegance. She is straightforward, damning, and consoling. She doesn’t rely on ornamental language or conceit. Her pared down lines are like paring knives.
I am living. I remember you.
Maggie reading Easter:
(Warning: Sexy poetry ahead…You WILL be seduced)
Maggie reading Practicing:
Maggie and I were lucky enough to take Dr. Melissa Crowe’s Queer Poetics class in fall 2023. Practicing was one of the poems we read, along with bangers from Nikki Finney, Chen Chen, Jill McDonough, Meg Day, CA Conrad, and many more. Below is Day discussing Aureole and their poem Infield Contrapuntal, which is now my golden standard for that (ridiculously challenging) form.
Here’s me reading Jill McDonough’s I Imagine the Butches’ Stripper Bar:
that thick silence in the dark, and the first pure thrill of unreluctant desire
Low Tide, Late August from Magdalene, read by Maggie:
and the small boats tugged on their anchors.
I am gripped by a cherishing so deep
for MBH for reading,
and for you for listening.
Until next! xoxo Gigi
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