A Night with Marie Howe in Conversation with Kyle Dargan
Kyle Dargan and Marie Howe discuss poetry at the Hill Center for their “The Life of a Poet” series. Photo taken by Hannah Cornell.
By: Hannah Cornell
“I don’t think I have anything to say, but a poem has something to say.” - Marie Howe
On Thursday, September 25th the Hill Center in downtown D.C. hosted “The Life of a Poet Featuring Marie Howe,” winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. In conversation with her was Kyle Dargan, award-winning poet and professor of writing and literature at American University. The Hill Center, an organization dedicated to broadening access to the arts, education, and cultural programs, has been hosting The Life of a Poet series since 2013 as an opportunity for the public to get a glimpse into a writer’s career and the events that have shaped their work. This series has welcomed numerous featured poets such as Terrance Hayes, Ada Limon, Elizabeth Alexander, and others.
Throughout the conversation with Dargan, Howe talked about a variety of topics. She captured the importance of having a literary community to rely on, shared her craft process, honed in on writing about grief and relationships, and more in the hour-long event. Clearly and deliberately filled with love through all its twists and turns, her life was just as evocative and compelling as her work. As a poet who captures grief so powerfully in all of its stages and forms, she spoke often about her brother and other loved ones she had lost and the way that made an appearance in her work. Her late brother, for example, inspired the poem “What the Living Do” which appears in her book of the same title. This poem is an incredible testament to resilience in the face of grief, what it means to be alive, and the power of remembering those who have left us.
Pierre Thomas, a first-year MFA Creative Writing student at American University, who specializes in poetry, shared that for him, the event felt like a call to find your writing community. “For me. Marie Howe really emphasized the need for poets (and writers) to find their writing group. Having that resource sharpens your writing.”
Anna Martignetti, another first-year MFA student at AU who primarily writes fiction but is experimenting in the realm of poetry shared Pierre’s feelings. “Marie Howe was just as candid, intuitive, and open-hearted as I expected. I loved it when she said her poetry came through her, not from her; that she was just the channel. She was so humble, explaining that she often doesn't know if her writing is a poem or not until she shares it with others. Sometimes what she writes hits. Other times it's just for her. She relies on the honest critique of a very small inner circle —her daughter, certain colleagues, and her brother when he was alive —to guide her,” she shared, praising the event.
“That’s how writers work, we don’t ever do anything alone,” Howe said, recounting her connections with other talented writers who not only loved and supported her work, but were also unafraid to be honest with her when a poem wasn’t working. “You want to find somebody who cares about writing as much as you do. They need to be rigorous and won’t lie to you,” she shared with the audience.
Sitting in the crowd among some of my classmates who also attended the event, I was struck by how lucky I am to be a part of a community of writers who are truly invested in one another’s work. While my classes are filled with creative minds who specialize in things from poetry to speculative fiction to lyric essays, we all come together to critique and celebrate each other’s work. Like Pierre, I was struck with Howe’s message about community and holding onto it.
Her discussion of craft also stuck with me. Howe mentioned that for her, a poem is not something that can be forced into being. In fact, she undergoes periods of time where she doesn’t write at all. “Will does not make poems,” she shared. “I don’t know what I’m doing when I write a poem. I feel like it’s writing me.” For Howe, poetry is the thing that speaks through her.
“It is so inspiring when a literary elder, pulitzer prize winner is vulnerable and open to sharing that she still doesn’t always know what she’s doing when she writes,” said Jalissa OH and Tara Hollander, poets and second-year students in the MFA program at AU.
Howe’s words also really resonated with me. As both a fiction writer and a poet, I have often struggled to explain how different the writing process is for my poetry versus my fiction. In fiction, I often have to do some initial planning, then write the story (which sometimes never adheres to the original plan), then do a lot of revision that muscles the plot and language into order. It requires an immense amount of effort to make the fiction work. I’ve always said that in comparison, poetry is the thing that just comes out of my body. Not only does it just come out, but it either works or doesn’t. Like Howe and unlike fiction, I cannot wrestle a poem into doing what I want it to do. While of course there are several rounds of editing that a poem undergoes to get to the right place (it is hardly ever right the first time), poetry generally resists overt force. It just is or isn’t - or, perhaps, isn’t yet. Sometimes you have the right poem but the wrong time. For me, hearing Howe speak about her process felt reassuring. I wasn’t alone in this feeling nor in my craft process. I don’t have to constantly produce to be an incredible writer like she is, nor do I have to have the ability to bend a poem to my desire. I just have to open myself up to the words that want to speak through me.
