Beyond My Own Wits Poems 1978 to 1983 & Poems From Youth in Germany

The poems in this collection sprang from an emotional impact on the author's life that inundated her with ideas and expressions that were new and unexpected to her. The sudden crisis overwhelmed her with an intoxicating sense of love, which she embodied in poems that intertwined inner with outer love in a highly personal symbolic language. What she experienced was indeed ''beyond her own wits.'' According to Jonathan Rabinowitz, publisher of Turtle Point Press, this collection of stunning, exuberant and uninhibited poems is an incantation and casts a spell through its exploration of the author's childhood, her family life and her spiritual awakening. Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano and Artistic Director of the National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble, notes that these poems ''spring from a deep well of thought and creativity inspiring us, the readers, to feel, hear and see the textures, sounds and colors of our own experiences and emotions.'' Annea Lockwood, Professor Emeritus, Vassar College, and composer of numerous works, writes, ''There is a transporting quality to these poems, these explorations of the 'embodied soul.' . . . So I read them aloud, relishing [Howard's] buoyant word-play, the fluid musicality of her rhythms, the rich multi-sensory world they evoke and the strength of her insight.''