Podcast Summary: Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Marie Howe
Podcast: Poetry Unbound (On Being Studios)
Host: Pádraig Ó Tuama
Guest: Marie Howe (Poet)
Date: December 19, 2025
Event: Recorded in tandem with the Greenbelt Festival, UK (remote from New York)
Duration: ~57 minutes
Episode Overview
This special episode of Poetry Unbound brings host Pádraig Ó Tuama into conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marie Howe. The discussion traverses a range of rich themes: embodiment, time, spiritual tradition, the lives and constraints/opportunities of women, mortality, desire, ecology, and the legacy of mythic and religious imagination in contemporary poetry. Through readings and conversation, Howe reflects on her work’s deeply personal and universal resonances, inviting listeners to dwell in poetry’s wisdom about living and loving in a complex world.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Embodiment, Waiting, and Presence
- Poem: The Letter 1968 [03:03]
- Howe reminisces about a time before digital communication, celebrating the embodied rituals of letter writing and the generative nature of waiting.
- "We knew how to wait then. It was what life was, much of it." – Marie Howe [03:29]
- Discussion centers on how technology has shaped the way we inhabit time and space, evoking a longing for slower, more corporeal forms of connection.
- “I feel this longing really to be back in time and space and embodied the way we used to be…” – Marie Howe [04:30]
2. Poetry’s Language of the Body & Attention
- Pádraig notes Howe’s precise, sensual attention to the physical (the writing and receiving of a letter) and asks if this is deliberate.
- Howe responds: “I don’t know what I’m doing when I write a poem. The poem has me...I’m dimly aware, you know, but…” [05:46]
- Marie reflects on the tangible, living presence in receiving letters—how touch, saliva, writing itself embeds intimacy.
3. Surface, Reality, and Deeper Perception
- Conversation about what is surface and what is ‘beneath,’ referencing both quantum physics and poetic attention.
- “What’s the surface and what beneath?” – Marie Howe [07:37]
4. Formative Influence of Catholic Nuns and Spiritual Imagination
- Howe details her upbringing by independent, educated nuns and their radical, justice-oriented influence.
- “They were not defined by a relationship to a man. That was radical.” – Marie Howe [09:17]
- Her entrance into religious myth felt authentic, not prescriptive—later emboldened by poets like Jane Kenyon.
- “It is the mythology of my life.” – Marie Howe [15:53]
5. Embodied Spirituality in Poetry
- Poem: The Snowstorm [11:54]
- Observing deer tracks, bird prints, and referencing the wounds of Christ, Howe interweaves nature and Christian myth.
- “The body of the world, right? The beautiful body of the world.” – Marie Howe [14:12]
6. Mary Magdalene, Myth, and the Feminine Experience
- Howe discusses making Magdalene a voice for the complexities of womanhood, resisting binary patriarchal divisions.
- “Most of us women know that we are neither [virgin nor whore] and we are both, and we are all.” – Marie Howe [18:25]
- Poem: Magdalene: The Seven Devils [20:16]
- The poem enumerates contemporary 'devils'—anxieties, compulsions, loneliness—grounding an ancient story in modern malaise.
- “The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying. … it was her body’s hunger finally evident. What our mother had hidden all her life.” – Marie Howe [23:43]
- Poem: On Men, Their Bodies [25:45]
- Howe’s bold, playful litany of experiences with men’s bodies.
- “One penis was so dear to me, I kissed it and kissed it even after I knew it had been with someone else.” – Marie Howe [27:30]
- Howe reflects on the fear and freedom in reading this publicly and the seriousness with which she treats ancient texts in contemporary life.
7. Teacher-Student Dynamics & Everyday Human Desire
- Discussing spiritual teachers, longing for closeness, and the human politics of spiritual communities.
- Poem: The Disciples [33:11]
- “For me it was different. I knew that even when he seemed not to be looking at me, he was. But of course I was wrong about that too.”
- Poem: The Teacher [34:00]
- On the feeling in a room with a profound teacher, and the idea that “something had to be let go of.”
8. Dead Friends, Grief, and Enduring Love
- Poem: My Dead Friends [36:05]
- Invoking guidance from loved ones lost.
- “Whatever leads to joy, they always answer: to more life and less worry.” – Marie Howe [37:22]
- Howe on her spiritual belief: “I feel that we don’t die. I don’t even know what I mean by that, but I just know that we don’t die. … Love never dies. Love is energy. It’s eternal energy.” [37:41]
9. Family, Loss, and the Everyday
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Poem: What the Living Do [38:23]
- Dedicated to her late brother John, who died of AIDS. The poem documents the minor aggravations and yearnings that structure the living—rooted in ordinary, sensory detail.
- “This is what the living do. … I am living. I remember you.” – Marie Howe [42:29]
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On how such writing becomes an invitation for others living in grief, especially those burdened by social silence and stigma around AIDS losses.
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Poem: The Gate [43:30]
- “I had no idea that the gate I would step through to finally enter this world would be the space my brother’s body made.” – Marie Howe [44:10]
10. Language, Voice, and Everyday Speech in Poetry
- Howe’s intent is to echo the American voice and the silences/misunderstandings of real conversation.
- “I love the way people speak.” – Marie Howe [45:46]
11. Ecology, Language, and Interconnection
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Longstanding eco-poetic engagement: she rethinks “nature” to avoid separation between human and world.
- “When we say nature, that’s a problem because it separates us from it and we are nature.” – Marie Howe [46:49]
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Poem: What the Earth Seemed to Say [48:33]
- Written during the pandemic, it’s an address from Earth to humans, challenging the notion of borders and reminding listeners of deep interconnectedness.
- "Do you still believe in borders? Birds soar over your maps and walls and always have." – Marie Howe [48:40]
- “Are you willing to take your place in the forest again?...Look at the sky. Are you willing to be the sky again?” – Marie Howe [50:20]
12. Oneness, Origins, and Yearning for Wholeness
- Poem: The Singularity (after Stephen Hawking) [53:13]
- Explores cosmic origins, a yearning to return to a state of radical unity, before human separation, loneliness, and hierarchy.
- "Would that we could wake up to what we were when we were ocean and before that to when sky was earth and animal was energy and a rock was liquid..." – Marie Howe [54:55]
- “No I, no we, no one, no was only a tiny tiny dot brimming with is is is is is all everything home.” – Marie Howe [56:11]
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
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On Embodiment and Technology:
“I feel this longing really to be back in time and space and embodied the way we used to be when the space between things was palpable.” —Marie Howe [04:30] -
On Religious Imagination:
“They were not defined by a relationship to a man. That was radical. … They were ahead of us in terms of thinking about justice and peace.” —Marie Howe [09:17] -
On the Universality of Grief and Love:
"I feel that we don’t die. ... Love never dies. Love is energy. It’s eternal energy." —Marie Howe [37:41] -
On Ecology and Interconnection:
“When we say nature, that’s a problem because it separates us from it and we are nature.” —Marie Howe [46:49] -
On Returning to Cosmic Wholeness:
“No I, no we, no one, no was only a tiny tiny dot brimming with is, is, is, is, is all everything home.” —Marie Howe [56:11]
Timestamps for Key Segments
- 03:03 – Marie Howe reads The Letter 1968
- 11:54 – The Snowstorm and discussion of spiritual/mythic imagery
- 20:16 – Magdalene: The Seven Devils
- 25:45 – On Men, Their Bodies
- 33:11 – The Disciples
- 34:00 – The Teacher
- 36:05 – My Dead Friends
- 38:23 – What the Living Do
- 43:30 – The Gate
- 48:33 – What the Earth Seemed to Say
- 53:13 – The Singularity (after Stephen Hawking)
Tone and Closing
The conversation is conversational, illuminating, and at once intimate and philosophical. Howe’s language is lucid, grounded in the body and the ordinary, yet always reaching for mystery and connection. The dialogue is marked by laughter, deep vulnerability, and a refusal to settle for easy certainties—insisting instead on love, attention, and living all the way through joy and sorrow alike.
“Whatever leads to joy, they always answer: to more life and less worry.” – Marie Howe, My Dead Friends [37:22]
For more: Visit poetryunbound.org for links to their Substack, books, live events, and more in-depth poetic conversations.