Light's Ladder

by Howell, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780295984001
• ISBN10: 0295984007
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr

Summary

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?"

Table of Contents

PREFACE	ix
I
If He Remembers June Light in Oslo	3	(1)
Running	4	(2)
Metamorphosis	6	(1)
Trusting the Beads	7	(3)
Unexpectation	10	(2)
History	12	(2)
Today	14	(1)
Situation 2003	15	(1)
A Party on the Way to Rome	16	(2)
Apacatastasis	18	(2)
If the World Were Glass	20	(2)
The Counterchime	22	(2)
Confession	24	(1)
He Writes to the Soul	25	(2)
1974	27	(4)
II Stories for Braille Calliope
Sometimes at the Braille Calliope	31	(1)
Bird Man Stranded	32	(2)
The Eye Becomes Birds Because of War	34	(2)
The Toad Prince	36	(1)
King's Ex	37	(3)
Zeno	40	(1)
The Thirteenth Interval	41	(2)
Teleology of the Airhose	43	(1)
King of the Butterflies	44	(4)
The Montavilla Reveries	48	(1)
The Fire Elegies	49	(8)
1. Family Values	49	(1)
2. The Double Suicide of Marriage	50	(1)
3. To Build a Fire	51	(2)
4. Storm	53	(1)
5. Arrivals	54	(1)
6. The Angels of Rescue	55	(2)
A Christmas Ode After the Fashion of Michael Heffernan...	57	(2)
Heaven	59	(4)
III
Why the River Is Always Laughing	63	(1)
Galileo	64	(2)
Story Time	66	(2)
All Day at the Brainard Pioneer Cemetery	68	(3)
Backyard Astronomy	71	(1)
Letter	72	(1)
Cole Porter	73	(2)
The Getaway	75	(2)
Keats	77	(1)
Event	78	(1)
Like Rain Descending	79	(2)
The New Orpheus	81	(1)
A Little Blues	82	(1)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	83	(2)
ABOUT THE POET	85