In Christopher Howell's twelfth collection of poems, his gifts for elegy, humor, and lyricism are on full display. The Grief of a Happy Life explores the interplay between memory and imagination, celebrating the ways that happiness and grief inform one another and give our lives fullness and vitality. Arranged in four sections, Howell's poems feature not only these concerns, but a large and various cast of characters as well. Aeneas, Saint Theresa, Ovid, Kierkegaard, a German submarine, and so much more are woven together with Howell's trademark precision and accessibility into exquisite tableaux, each providing a view of both what we must live with and what we must not live without.

The Grief of a Happy Life (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Howell, Christopher

Poetry

University of Washington Press

Light's Ladder (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

In this extraordinary new collection by distinguished poet Christopher Howell, the opening poem presents us with a spiritual paradox that will echo throughout its pages. The speaker remembers an earlier time of happiness, freedom, and a certain innocence. The poem closes with: And if he remembers now he is in love, which is the soul’s condition, and alone because that is how we live."How we live" is the book's major inquiry; its illustration, the poems' major achievement. How do we live, in our dailiness, in our loves, our private and global wars? And, in the face of unbearable grief, how can we live?KeatsWhen Keats, at last beyond the curtainof love’s distraction, lay dying in his roomon the Piazza di Spagna, the melody of the BerniniFountain “filling him like flowers,”he held his breath like a coin, looked outinto the moonlight and thought he saw snow.He did not suppose it was fever or the body’sweakness turning the mind. He thought, “England!”and there he was, secretly, for the restof his improvidently short life: up to his neckin sleigh bells and the impossibly English criesof street venders, perfectand affectionate as his soul.For days the snow and statuary sang him so farbeyond regret that if now you walk rancorlessand alone there, in the piazza, the white shadowof his last words to Severn, “Don’t be frightened,”may enter you.

History & Criticism

In this extraordinary new collection by distinguished poet Christopher Howell, the opening poem presents us with a spiritual paradox that will echo throughout its pages. The speaker remembers an earlier time of happiness, freedom, and a certain innocence. The poem closes with: And if he remembers now he is in love, which is the soul’s condition, and alone because that is how we live. "How we live" is the book's major inquiry; its illustration, the poems' major achievement. How do we live, in our dailiness, in our loves, our private and global wars? And, in the face of unbearable grief, how can we live? Keats When Keats, at last beyond the curtain of love’s distraction, lay dying in his room on the Piazza di Spagna, the melody of the Bernini Fountain “filling him like flowers,” he held his breath like a coin, looked out into the moonlight and thought he saw snow. He did not suppose it was fever or the body’s weakness turning the mind. He thought, “England!” and there he was, secretly, for the rest of his improvidently short life: up to his neck in sleigh bells and the impossibly English cries of street venders, perfect and affectionate as his soul. For days the snow and statuary sang him so far beyond regret that if now you walk rancorless and alone there, in the piazza, the white shadow of his last words to Severn, “Don’t be frightened,” may enter you.

University of Washington

Dreamless and Possible: Poems New and Selected (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

This generous volume of new and selected poems by Christopher Howell encompasses three decades of his distinguished work, drawing upon all of his previous books. Dreamless and Possible chronicles his wide range of interests, expressed by blending elements of the surreal with biography, imagist economy with a storyteller’s informality. It also shows the development of his signature style, reflected, as poet Albert Goldbarth has written, in poems “connected by deep thought worn lightly, and by large vision writ in small details.”These are poems of palpable force. Howell thinks out loud as he works his way through what charms, challenges, and defines the human project. He questions, tests images and associations, and leaps, trusting himself, into midair. In consequence, the cerebral energy propels his poems beyond statement and into startlingly evocative modes, grappling with and sifting profound matters of memory, imagination, and grief, tempered always by joy.

This fine collection of poems from an experienced writer awakens, invites and embraces us, and never turns us away without renewed insights into the unifying relation of disparate things.

Memory and Heaven

Univ of Washington Pr

Eastern Washington Univ Pr

Sweet Afton: Poems

Black River Pr

Each of us early in life has an imaginary friend, one we makeup, that no religion has invented first. It is a pleasure, not a strain, to believe in Christopher Howell's Ling Wei-this shared friend of ours. We won't get tired of listening to his life and insights, the round and wavy way he speaks the truth. Ling Wei and his creator are powerful poets. --Sandra McPherson

Though silence : the Ling Wei texts : poems

L'Epervier Press ; distributed by Small Press Distribution

Sea Change: Poems

Small Pr Distribution

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Howell, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Howell, Christopher

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Howell, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Grief of a Happy Life (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

Light's Ladder (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

Light's Ladder (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

Dreamless and Possible: Poems New and Selected (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

Dreamless and Possible: Poems New and Selected (Pacific Northwest Poetry Series)

Memory and Heaven

Memory and Heaven

Sweet Afton: Poems

Though silence : the Ling Wei texts : poems

Sea Change: Poems