20 Quotes by Marie Howe

Memory is a poet, not an historian.

When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don’t write what you know, discover something new.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless: I am living. I remember you.

I am living. I remember you.

We tell each other stories to help each other live. That’s why I read poetry. I read poetry to stay alive. That’s why I went to poetry in the first place, that’s why I stay with it, that’s why I’ll never leave it.

Anything I’ve ever tried to keep by force I’ve lost.

Soon I will die, he said, and then what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened, and then everyone can rest.

Poetry is telling something to someone.

I called her name into the fold between night and day.