Christopher Howell – The Grief of a Happy Life

The Grief of a Happy Life explores the interplay between memory and imagination, celebrating the ways that happiness and grief inform one another and give our lives fullness and vitality. Aeneas, Saint Theresa, Ovid, Kierkegaard, a German submarine, and so much more are woven together with Howell’s trademark precision and accessibility into exquisite tableaux, each providing a view of both what we must live with and what we must not live without.

Born in Portland, Oregon, Christopher Howell is author of a dozen poetry collections, including Love’s Last Number, Gaze, and Dreamless and Possible: Poems New and Selected. He has received numerous honors, including the Washington State Book Award, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Artist Trust, and three Pushcart Prizes. A military journalist during the Vietnam War, he has been for many years director and principal editor for Lynx House Press and now lives in Spokane, Washington, where he teaches in Eastern Washington University’s master of fine arts in creative writing program.