Ann Howells calls her collection, Texas Poems, but you don't have to be a Texan, or even like Texas, to experience the wonder of these tiny word mechanisms she has created. You can't help but run through these poems like you would a field of bluebonnets in her beloved state. But you would immediately double back and say, "What was that?" Every single one of these small wonders has a tonal warmth that produces a crystal clear snapshot of her perceptions. Susan Mitchell says, "The world is wily and doesn't want to be caught." Ann Howells has done what all writers want to do: She has not only caught her world, she has found the essence of it and has rendered it into words.

Under a Lone Star

Literature & Fiction

Howells, Ann

Poetry

Village Books Press

The Chesapeake Bay and the hardy denizens who eke out a livelihood from or near its unpredictable waters are the stuff of legend. Ann Howells, having grown up in this beautiful and often storm-ravaged region, returns to her homeland with haunting memory and detail, evoking, in exquisitely wrought poetry, the family members and friends who nurtured her and the unforgettable life experiences which honed the very essence of her soul. Not since the distinguished achievement of Dave Smith has a poet captured the Chesapeake Bay culture with the power and authority of Ann Howells.
Larry D. Thomas,Member, Texas Institute of Letters,2008 Texas Poet Laureate 
Dallas poet and editor Ann Howells left rural Maryland’s shore long ago, but that region of mists and dangerous work on the water never left her. In So Long As We Speak Their Names, she beautifully, evocatively recreates the world she grew up with and in. She brings us not just that marshy land where land meets sea, but even more so, the watermen who risk their lives hauling their livings from the sea, and of course their children and wives, who wait, pray, and hope the sea won’t take their men forever. It’s a hard life, a dangerous life, but as one character states, “I’m cast iron.” The lives portrayed here should never be forgotten. We should indeed speak their names, but even more, read their stories, over and over.
Robert Cooperman, Author of In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains, winner of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry
Take a waterglobe that includes the coves of Whidbey Island, and the weather, and weathered people of “The Shipping News”, place it gently, with calloused hands, into the area of the Chesapeake Bay, and you have So Long As We Speak Their Names, a glorious collection by Ann Howells. Where names are old-fashioned but work ethic isn’t, this is set in the time of our parents and their parents, where each cruel winter brings new widows, and everyone has just a drop of "that damned Twilley blood!”
I loved this collection. The watermen and their women—Ann taught me all about them. I want to eat wild asparagus, stain my lips purple with berries, learn how to can for the winter. This is not a book I’ll read and put away, I’ll keep it close-at-hand forever. And I bet you will too.
Tobi Alfier, Co-Editor San Pedro River Review, Blue Horse Press

So Long As We Speak Their Names

Kelsay Books

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Books by Howells, Ann

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

Under a Lone Star

So Long As We Speak Their Names