The Good Thief
Marie Howe
The heralded debut collection of poems by the author of What the Living Do (Norton, 1997). Selected by Margaret Atwood as a winner in the 1987 Open Competition of the National Poetry Series, this unique collection was the first sounding of a deeply authentic voice. Howe's early writings concern relationship, attachment, and loss, in a highly original search for personal transcendence. Many of the thirty-four poems in The Good Thief appeared in such prestigious journals and periodicals as The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Agni Review, and The Partisan Review.
“Marie Howe’s poetry doesn't fool around...[The poems] transcend their own dark roots.”
—Margaret Atwood
“Howe’s haunting lyricism lifts the back shades on the familial and the mythic in poems that bespeak a hard-earned compassion amid the world's chaffing.”
—The Boston Phoenix
Marie Howe is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Magdalene. She also edited, with Michael Klein, the anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. Howe is the recipient of Peter Lavan Younger Poet Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Mary Ingram Bunting fellowship from Radcliffe College, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artist Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.
Paperback / $17.00 / 978-089255-127-9 / 54 pages / Poetry
⤖Read more about our poetry imprint.