The Grief of a Happy Life

In Christopher Howells twelfth collection of poems, his gifts for elegy, humor, and lyricism are on full display. 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. Arranged in four sections, Howells poems feature not only these concerns, but a large and various cast of characters as well. Aeneas, Saint Theresa, Ovid, Kierkegaard, a German submarine, and so much more are woven together with Howells 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.