New and Selected Poems
Marie Howe
W.W. Norton (2024)
$28.99
In My Trade Is Mystery, Carl Phillips writes the following: “I’ve long been fascinated with the role of a first poem in a poet’s first book. It’s a bit like the literary equivalent of attending one’s first debutante ball.” Phillips explains that this first poem is how we’ve chosen to announce ourselves, deliberately and purposefully, to the world. This first poem is encoded with preoccupations, obsessions, and assertions that might either be reiterated or railed against throughout the course of subsequent books. The first poem in Marie Howe’s debut collection, The Good Thief, is “Part of Eve’s Discussion”; this squat single-sentence lyric does all the work Phillips suggests such a primary poem might. For years I assumed “Part of Eve’s…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, November/December 2024