“In the middle of my life – just past the middle – walking along the street with our little dog Jack on a leash . . . I came to the edge and did not know the way.”

A review of “New and Selected Poems” in 100 words by Catherine Stover

About 700 years ago, Dante wrote a poem that begins this way, “Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark / For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” Marie Howe opens her new poetry collection by saluting Dante’s Inferno and all of the poets over the centuries who have written about the moment they no longer knew what to do. She belongs to a long tradition of poets who can turn “an everyday anecdote into a parable.” This is a rare gift — and is very difficult — which is why she received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Work cited:

Howe, Marie. New and Selected Poems. W. W. Norton & Company, 2024, p. 3.