Magdalene

by Marie Howe

“Marie Howe’s poetry is luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life.”―Stanely Kunitz Magdalene imagines the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as a woman who embodies the spiritual and sensual, alive in a contemporary landscape―hailing 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.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Religion, Spirituality, Mythology, 21st Century, Feminism

96 pages, Hardcover

First published March 28, 2017

About the author

Born in Rochester, New York, Marie Howe attended Sacred Heart Convent School and the University of Windsor. She received an MFA from Columbia University, where she studied with Stanley Kunitz, whom she refers to as “my true teacher.”

Howe has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia, and NYU. She co-edited (with Michael Klein) the essay anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). She has received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Reviews

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 5 out of 5]

~ Before the Beginning ~

Was I ever a virgin?
Did someone touch me before I could speak?

Who had me before I knew I was an I?

So that I wanted that touch again and again
without knowing who or why or from whence it came?
***

~ The Affliction ~

When I walked across a room I saw myself walking
as if I were someone else,

when I picked up a fork, when I pulled off a dress,
as if I were in a movie.

It’s what I thought you saw when you looked at me.

So when I looked at you, I didn’t see you
I saw the me I thought you saw, as if I were someone else.

I called that outside-watching. Well I didn’t call it anything
when it happened all the time.

But one morning after I stopped the pills —standing in the kitchen
for one second I was inside looking out.

Then I popped back outside. And saw myself looking.
Would it happen again? It did, a few days later.

My friend Wendy was pulling on her winter coat, standing by the kitchen door
and suddenly I was inside and I saw her.
I looked out from my own eyes
and I saw: her eyes: blue gray transparent
and inside them: Wendy herself!

Then I was outside again,

and Wendy was saying, Bye-bye, see you soon,
as if Nothing Had Happened.

She hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t known that I’d Been There
for Maybe 40 Seconds,
and that then I was Gone.

She hadn’t noticed that I Hadn’t Been There for Months, years, the entire time she’d known me.

I needn’t have been embarrassed to have been there for those seconds;
she had not Noticed The Difference.

This happened on and off for weeks,


and then I was looking at my old friend John:
: suddenly I was in: and I saw him,

and he: (and this was almost unbearable)
he saw me see him,

and I saw him see me.

He said something like, You’re going to be ok now,
or, It’s been difficult hasn’t it,

but what he said mattered only a little.
We met — in our mutual gaze — in between
a third place I’d not yet been.
***

~ October ~

The first cold morning, the little pumpkins lined up at the corner market, and
the girl walks along Hudson Street to school and doesn’t look back.

The old sorrow blows in with the scent of wood smoke
as I walk up the five flights to my apartment and lean hard against

the broken dishwasher so it will run. Then it comes to me: Yes, I’ll die, so will everyone, so has everyone. It’s what we have in common.

And for a moment, the sorrow ceased, and I saw that it hadn’t been sorrow
after all, but loneliness, and for a few moments, it was gone.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the last year I've tossed several lauded little books aside, irritated by their obsession with their own pain, exclusion, marginality – in poetry as in conversation, that is not enough. A poem, particularly a poem about personal misery, requires craft, vision and humor. In her new book of essays, Louise Glück takes a hard look at American Narcissists whose poems "culminate in that tiresome Now I see of transfigured experience" – and with that comment sharp in my mind I opened Marie Howe's Magdalene with wariness. And was disarmed, immediately, by the epigraph.

His disciples said, When will you be visible to us? and when will we see you?
He said, When you undress and are not ashamed.
–The Gospel According to Thomas

All right, I thought, let's go.

This is a dark book, haunted by the figure of Mary Magdalene, whom Howe conflates with "the woman taken in adultery" to illuminating effect. Having chosen her central metaphor, Howe makes the most of it and, for me, it worked. Many poems are powerful, sometimes blasphemous and sometimes funny. (No man will read "On Men, Their Bodies" without wincing; probably no woman could read it without laughing.) Not every poem moved me, but some stopped me in mid-breath. Unlike Narcissus, a mirror is the last thing I want.

Magdalene: The Addict

I liked Hell,

I liked to go there alone

relieved to lie in the wreckage, ruined, physically undone.

The worst had happened. What else could hurt me then? 


I thought it was the worst, thought nothing worse could come.

Then nothing did, and no one.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely exquisite yet grounded book of poems. As always, Howe's language is illuminated. These poems examine the world through Mary Magdalene's eyes. They explore desire and personal struggle.

A tremendous work of great beauty.

[tia ❀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Landing fundamentally changed my life (the reason why I picked up this collection in the first place) but surely tomorrow I will wake up with 0 memory of what happened here

(my bonus was Magdalene Afterwards. delicious)

[Ken]

Book One of my two-book Marie Howe tour. Number two is hurtling through the mails now, and I suspect I will like it more than this, though this grew on me once I saw the conceit and set aside the notion that it was mostly about Mary Magdalene. It's about everything, really, but death as much as life, and motherhood and loss and love.

Deeper thoughts and a poem from the book are shared here:

https://kencraftpoetry.wordpress.com/...

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In the paintings of the Annunciation / Mary has looked up from her book to listen to the angel. / In some her finger keeps her place, as if she would / return to where she was, or to who she was after listening / (But she will not return) / Where is that angel? In the room? / Within the room her reading has made within her?" (56-57).

The perfect read for Lent. I've been wanting to experience this collection for years (since I read Carolyn Waldee's poem based on Marie Howe's "Magdalene-The Seven Devils" as a freshman and felt a shock run through my body; it was so unlike anything I had ever read before). I love this book for its moments of profound clarity and confusion.

[Daisy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful.
Just writing words is not poetry and spacing out the trite does not disguise the fact that there is nothing to these poems. So dull I forgot what they were about while I was reading them.
Avoid.

[Pau · Rating 5 out of 5]

co-star was right poetry does teeter on the edge of insanity

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 5 out of 5]

No surprise this was excellent. Here's a link to one of my faves:

https://poets.org/poem/magdalene-seve...

[Kasey Jueds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marie Howe is a wonderfully inspiring example of a poet who doesn't "produce" a lot (I once heard her say at a conference that she feels a responsibility to stick up for poets who write very slowly, since she's one of them), but whose published work is consistently wise, awake, and beautifully realized. Magdalene may be my favorite of her books. I read it all in one sitting and experienced that paradoxical feeling I have when I'm immersed in a book I love: I wanted to keep reading, to finish... and I wanted my immersion in the world of the poems never to end. Magdalene does feel like a world, and a world that despite (I'm not sure "despite" is the right word - maybe "because of"?) its Biblical connections feels like *this* world, only a truer, clearer version of the world we tend to experience in our day to day, skating-over-the-surface lives. Some poems are clearly in the voice of the historical Mary Magdalene; others are more contemporary; somehow, they're all spoken by the same woman, and despite their differences they weave a seamless whole.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd been anticipating this collection since hearing Marie Howe read from it at AWP, and it was well worth the wait. This book cements her as one of my very favorite poets, from whom I will read anything.

“You know how it is
something has to put a stick in the spoke
to stop the wheel from spinning
and it occurs to you
what you thought was true is not at all,
nope
and you glimpse the scrim through
which you’ve been gazing…”- “Adaptation”

[Ygraine · Rating 2 out of 5]

found this almost entirely unremarkable apart from the following, which felt like the beginning of an interesting thought:

"in the paintings of the annunciation
mary has looked up from her book to listen to the angel.
in some her finger keeps her place, as if she would
return to where she was, or to who she was after listening”

[Salem ☥ · Rating 1 out of 5]

sighed so loud.

[shelby]

no, i'm not well after reading this. ate my heart then spit it back out. i will be obnoxious about this collection in the future. love you.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this in one feverishly good sitting knowing very little about the story of mary magdalene (grew up jewish). i looked up her story after finishing it and was awe struck by the work marie howe has accomplished here. fiery, quick, and heart wrenching writing. it also has a similar energy as “autobiography of red” with the contemporary, flexible and sexy and sad retelling of a myth/old story. so good.

[su · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Then it comes to me: Yes I’ll die, / so will everyone, so has everyone. It’s what we have in common. / And for a moment, the sorrow ceased, and I saw that it hadn’t been sorrow after all, / but loneliness, and for a few moments, it was gone."

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificence. Brilliance. Simplicity. Honesty. Love. One of my favorite poets, and her masterpiece.

[Marilyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A small but powerful collection, MAGDALENE: POEMS by Marie Howe (former poet laureate of New York State) is amazing. I read it slowly yesterday in about 2 hours, right after it came in the mail. It's Magdalene as metaphor for the modern woman and Modern Woman as metaphor re Magdalene. I was mesmerized by the writing and by the images it brought before me (no, not illustrations - picturing within my own mind). I have long been interested in Magdalene - her stories, legends, Christian history, Divine Feminine aspects, etc. I have lots of books and other materials about her, have created and led women's writing & creativity workshops re her, and am always looking for more info. I will be re-reading portions this book again and again.

There's a poem close to the end of MAGDALENE titled "Magdalene at the Theopoetics Conference" that had me looking up info about "Theopoetics." Yes, there really is such a thing - both the poetry genre and the conference. I intend to check out more info re Theopoetics. I expect that a sestina I wrote a decade or two ago qualifies as "Theopoetical" literature. And I've tagged several poems in Howe's book that have phrases and words that, to me, are writing prompts!

These poems are pieces to make one think, to contemplate a woman's "place" in the world - quite feminist in nature yet spiritual as well. And the writing is excellent. It's a jewel not to be missed!

[H]

bought this on the strength of the poem “magdelene: the addict,” which remains my favorite within. i love the collapse of story and time here—reimagining an old figure—reminds me of carson—so many clear, precise, luminous moments.

addition on a second read—somehow this fucked me up so much more going through it again. maybe i’m at a place where i can understand it better but it hit like a hammer to the back of the hand on page after page

[Kari Yergin]

Another Marie Howe collection with almost as many dogeared pages to be reread as not. One reviewer said that they loved her for her “profound clarity and confusion.”
“How many times did he say it
Change doesn’t hurt he’d say,
As much as the resistance to change.”

A few of the dogeared poems:
Magdalene – the seven Devils
The affliction
Magdalene: the woman taken in adultery
Magdalena afterwards
The map

[Pablito]

Many of these poems describe "a woman striving to be the subject of her own life," as the inside blurb tells us. But the one that resonated deepest with me, reminding me of Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts", was this brief one titled "Calvary":

Someone hanging clothes on a line between buildings,

someone shaking out a rug from an open window

might have heard hammering, one or two blocks away

and thought little or nothing of it.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marie Howe's stunningly crafted collection hangs on the persona of Mary Magdalene, but speaks universally about how complex and flawed and divine we are as humans. The poems bleed a range of emotions. Their ordering is flawless. As reviewer Michael Cunningham says in the book jacket: "...I could swear the book emitted light when I put it down on my bedside table and turned off the lamp."

[Sparrow · Rating 1 out of 5]

Words fail me. I wish they'd also failed Howe. Actually, I think they did.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marie Howe's first two books are just stunning; I go back to them every couple of years. This one feels--sorry--less so.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

immediately one of my new favorite collections. wow

[Carolyn Waldee · Rating 5 out of 5]

and if i read the entire thing in the bath in a furious effort to feel more like myself! what then!!

[Vartika · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slim volume brings together 44 persona poems written in the voice of a Magdalene of the poet's own: she is variously and altogether Mary 'the woman caught in adultery', Mary the mother of God, Marie the poet – an everywoman who slips in and out of the biblical and the contemporary to speak to the expectations made of and by her sex.

While this concept serves the collection really well on the whole, I found that the individual poems I liked the most are ones that lie outside of the Magdalene cycle: "The Affliction", "What I Did Wrong", "The News", and of course, the very same that bought me to Marie Howe in the first place:

The Landing

I stood beside the high cupboard that
covered

the radiator in the hall (inside the
drawers: the odd pencils and pins

we couldn’t find when we needed
them)

near the front stairs that rose up and
turned by the high windows.

What did we call that space? The
landing.

All the pills had brought me to that
place

And I understood that if I kept it all up...

no one would know me.

A dim light far in the distance? No.

To love—I had to be there.

I had to be there to be loved.

[Gee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish this short book of poems. Nothing for me in here. Shocking that this is the talent who gave us What the Living Do. Hated especially the penis poem. NO THANK YOU. This would never have been published if she were not already a superstar. Would never recommend to anyone unless I hated them.

[lauren mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, sensual, & layered. Here Howe creates tender and intricate still lives of pain, sex, desire, motherhood, and hope. Mary Magdalene is an inspiration of mine when it comes to my own poetic style pursuits, and the feminine heart that dwells in these pages is brimming with passion and so very alive.

[Sellmeagod · Rating 1 out of 5]

Formally repetitive.

Some cute meditations on life intersecting the divine, but very redundant, pales next to Szybist.