When Is Poetry Just Memoir in Verse?
A Reflection on Marie Howe’s What the Living Do
Disclaimer: This reflection is based on What the Living Do by Marie Howe, a book assigned as part of a poetry cohort at Pocket MFA. The thoughts below are personal, exploratory, and not intended as a definitive critique. [Trigger Warning: This post contains light references to the poets’ work about molestation and rape, but nothing in detail or graphic.]
When Is Poetry Just Memoir in Verse?
In What the Living Do By Marie Howe, grief is anything but abstract. In fact, it is clearly communicated without rhyme, and dare I say, without any obvious meter? And in these moments, we might ask—is this still poetry, or is it better described as memoir in verse?
These questions have been tugging at me since I closed the book.
Marie Howe writes plainly. Alarmingly so. There are no disguises. No sweeping metaphors or mythic scaffolding. Just memory, detail, narration. It feels like prose—but maybe it breathes like poetry? And like many things, maybe the distinction isn’t a line, but a spectrum:
On one end: lyric intensity, musical compression, imagery, and metaphor. On the other: narrative, memory, the prose of lived experience. Howe’s work hovers runs in and out of that luminous middle where the story becomes art but not through metaphor, through unflinching attention. And yet that attention raises other questions of tension.
Where is the balance between navel-gazing, self-indulgence, and introspection?
How much “I” is too much? Howe never apologizes for centering herself or her brother or the weight of personal memory. She doesn't universalize. She trusts the reader to come closer—or not. And who are we to judge someone else’s art? One of the powers of art is transformation: Transforming greif, sadness, and anger into something tangible.
And yet, Marie Oliver, in A Poetry Handbook, says:
“Loyalty to the actual experience—whatever got the poem started—is not necessarily helpful, often it is a hindrance.”
Particulars, Specificity, & Discovery.
We’re told: write what you know. Include particulars and get specific. “Don’t just say the tree in my backyard—say sycamore.”, thats what people connect with. But is there a golden measure of scope? What happens when a poem is so deeply embedded in a single life that there’s no room for the reader to enter—no room for discovery?
When does particulars and specificity become exclusion?
Critics have praised Howe for this very stance—for her refusal to polish grief into something tidy. Publishers Weekly called the book a transformation of “agonizing, slow-motion loss into redemption.” Others describe the poems as accessible, plainspoken, but emotionally searing. And maybe that’s the key. The work doesn't ask to be for everyone. It asks to be—as it is. A record and not a performance?
With Marie Howe, there is very little if any separation between speaker and poet. There are also so many moments of heaviness. The book references molestation and rape, not in abstract or metaphor, but in plain, devastating detail. These lines do not seek catharsis—they seek witness. As a reader, I flinched. As a writer, I wondered how one speaks the unspeakable without flattening it into craft. I also wondered if the poet cared for an audience at all.
Maybe poetry isn’t about offering a mirror big enough for everyone. Maybe it’s about offering a shard—a sliver. Not of The Truth, but A Truth. And allowing that to be enough. And maybe that’s what separates poetry from prose, or memoir from indulgence: not form or subject, but intention. The way it listens inward. The rigor of its honesty. The willingness to remain specific & particular, and still speak to the masses.
F I N A L T H O U G H T
I would love to continue this discussion in the comments, because the truth is, I don’t know. It’s something I wrestle with as a poet: How much of my story do I place in the poem? How well should it be disguised, if at all? I absolutely believe in particulars and specifics, but at what scope? Im not sure.
Terms Defined
Navel-gazing is writing that turns inward without insight—introspective almost to the point of localism. It dwells in the self without anchoring the reader in any meaning beyond it.
Self-indulgence in poetry occurs when emotional expression overshadows craft. It’s not about how much feeling is present, but whether that feeling has been shaped into something intentional, or something offered.
Introspection examines the inner self in pursuit of understanding. It asks questions.
Exposition explains. It tells. It can flatten a poem if overused. It describes by replacing discovery with instruction.
Existentialism interrogates the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life, often holding contradiction and uncertainty without needing to resolve them.
Particulars what the poem notices: the objects, the people, the moments. They are the nouns in the room.
Specificity is how intentionally and precisely those particulars are chosen, framed, and named. But too much specificity, unanchored from emotional resonance, can become exclusion—creating a world too private to be entered. The reader watches but cannot feel.
and Abstraction in poetry? That’s the opposite problem: language that is vague or generalized that it loses applicable meaning, sensation, or emotional footholds. Howe avoids this entirely.
If you enjoyed this post, please tap a heart onto it, it’s a cute metric, but it helps me grow as a writer.
Thank you for giving voice to these important questions and for sharing your honest wrestling with them nj❤️❤️
I know my opinion might not reflect the majority, but I would rather read a personal “story” in a poem or collection rather than have the writer try to make it universal for me. I want the writer to give it to me as it was for them: intense, messy, and unique. Let me discover my experience in their story. I want to feel like I’m being allowed to read private writing. 😹