Description:
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.
Brief description: Christopher Howell's eleventh collection of poems, Love's Last Number, was published in 2017 by Milkweed Editions. His poems, essays, and translations have also appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Crazy Horse, Denver Quarterly, Field, Gettysburg Review, Harper's, Hudson Review, Iowa Review, Northwest Review, Poetry Northwest, Southern Review, and Volt. He has been the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, two National Endowment Fellowships, two fellowships from the Artist Trust, and the Stanley W. Lindberg Award for Editorial Excellence. Howel is the director and principal editor for Lynx House Press. Howell is also editor of Willow Springs Books, director of the Eastern Washington University Press, and on the faculty of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University. He lives in Spokane, Washington.
Review Quotes:
". . . gleans the Spokane resident's best work from eight books and his haunting new work."
--Mike Dillon "City Living"