Just Waking: Poems

Christopher Howell’s poems rely on a redeeming darkness to bring themselves into the world. Through meditative, short lyrics, and an eerily quiet approach, Howell redefines the place of the self in a poem. These deceptively triumphant views of discovery and survival arrive in a place that welcomes us as both witnesses and participants. - Bloomsbury Review It is a great pleasure, once again, to listen to the particular play of Christopher Howell s mind, his elegant rhythms and graceful rhetoric; and, beside all that craftsmanship and intelligence, how good to encounter that lovely eye for flesh, for the succulent things of this world. -Patricia Goedicke

Once I began reading Just Waking, I had to read it straight through, late into the night. I had a growing need to experience the way these poems and their many voices move into the world of things and people and ghosts and ideas, with this speculative intelligence, this tender and sometimes comic discourse that by so loving a sense of what is beautiful in being alive always achieves the condition of music. I just didn t want the book to end. -Bill Tremblay

Deep in this book is an unfolding story of waking. Experience resonates clearly, emotively, paradoxically, and the imagination teaches and redeems through inner dialogue and vision. Read Machado and Lyric with Blue Horses to see how moving and masterful a poet Christopher Howell is. If the poet James Wright were still living, we’d have two poets writing with such imperative, beauty, and depth. -James Grabill