Light's Ladder (Pacific Northwest Poetry SeriesPacific Northwest Poetry SeriesPacific Northwest Poetry SeriesPacific Northwest Poetry SeriesPacific Northwest Poetry SeriesLight's Ladder) - Hardcover

Howell, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 029598399X ISBN 13: 9780295983998

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2004

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 029598399X
• ISBN 13: 9780295983998
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96