18 pages • 36 minutes read

What the Living Do

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Authorial Context

Marie Howe has made the personal context of “What the Living Do” very clear. In 1989, Howe’s brother John died from AIDS complications. Despite a large age gap and many other siblings, Marie and John were very close, and would almost daily talk on the phone. In an interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s interview program "Fresh Air," Howe says she began “What the Living Do” when she “decided to quit writing poems all day, and just write John a letter.” Whether or not the particular details about the sink and errands are accurate to Howe’s experience, the addressee, “Johnny,” is based on her real-life younger brother. In a 2018 interview with David Elliot, Howe said “John’s living and dying changed my aesthetic entirely... I wanted after that to make an art that was transparent, that was accessible to people who don’t usually read poetry.” Howe’s intentional shift in aesthetic style led to What the Living Do (the book of the same title as the poem) her most well-known book.

The contextual information, then, is important for several reasons. It gives the reader a better understanding of the poet’s intentions. Without this information, the reader might assume that the kitchen sink is clogged and the thermostat is broken because those household issues would otherwise have been handled by Johnny, likely a departed husband or domestic partner. Instead, the reader understands these as evidence of the speaker’s depression and grief. It helps to explain the informal diction of “What the Living Do,” and the transformation of Howe’s writing style over time. It also allows the poem to function as an elegy. “What the Living Do” deals with the continuation of a human’s love after death through memory and is a tribute to John’s life and passing.

Literary Context

In form and content, “What the Living Do” is influenced by American 20th Century Confessional poetry of the 1950s and 60s and sometimes thought to be a form of Postmodernism. Poets such as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman used unadorned language—usually in free (unrhymed, unmetered) verse—focused on the “I,” to recount personal experiences and examine intense emotions; these poets often pondered family intimacy, mortality, and grief. Before Confessional poetry, many of the more intimate and painful elements of these subjects had not been explored in American poetry. Howe’s poetry, and particularly “What the Living Do,” displays some hallmarks of Confessional poetry. Howe uses everyday language, intimate, first-person narration, and colloquial diction in free verse to examine her personal experience of a loved one’s death. Like the work of many Confessional poets, Howe’s writing is demonstrably and intentionally autobiographical.

“What the Living Do” is also a strong example of the ways in which Howe’s writing diverges from that of her predecessors. While the most famous Confessional poets tended to plumb the extreme depths of personal suffering and mental illness, Howe’s poem retains impressions of hope, sacredness, and even joy. Confessional poets are sometimes criticized for apparent nihilism or overbearing focus on the speaker’s personal suffering, but Howe balances her new comprehension of life and death with its outward implications for others and with John’s memory.