Marie Howe was born in 1950 in Rochester, New York, the oldest of nine children. Telling stories was a way of life for her family and the household of eleven people assured her of a ready audience. Raised Catholic, she attended the Sacred Heart Convent School, where Howe says the nuns modeled what it meant to live a spiritually active and politically engaged life. After taking a bachelor of science degree from the University of Windsor, Howe had a short career as a journalist in Rochester, writing for a few local papers. She did not begin taking herself seriously as a poet until she turned thirty, after attending a poetry workshop for high school teachers with Karen Pelz at Dartmouth College. She credits that workshop with changing her life. A few years later, she enrolled in Columbia's master of fine arts program, where she studied with Stanley...