A second volume of poetry by Howe, What the Living Do: Poems (1997), is a collection of forty-eight poems about what the living do after the death of a loved one. A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented, "The tentative transformation of agonizing, slow-motion loss into redemption is Howe's signal achievement in this wrenching second collection." The reviewer added that the poet's consciousness becomes consumed with thoughts of a brother dying of AIDS and travels over the territory of both everyday life and the childhood memories of the poet. The Publishers Weekly critic praised the book calling the poems "rigorously crafted in their long, open lines of taut, precise language," and added that the collection revealed Howe's "power as a metaphysician for the coming century of fractured faith."
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