Christopher Howell (Gaze) demonstrates the imagination of a fabulist and the intellect of a philosopher in his richly contemplative poetry collection Love's Last Number.
The pieces are compiled in three thematic sections exploring recurring themes of love, loss, death and divinity. Howell was a military journalist in the Vietnam War, and his experience shows in a number of poems about historical conflicts and the ghostly legacies of refugees, soldiers and others lost in the machinations of history. In "Tin Soldiers," a prisoner of war about to be executed beautifully describes "the drenched butterfly of my hope/ wandering in circles."
It is this eloquent imagism that gives such power to Howell's poems. His metaphors are deceptively simple. Nowhere is this talent more evident than in the way Howell addresses the existence of God. "God is a tree on the moon/ inside us," he writes in "Reflection Upon Psalm 121." Neither trying to prove nor deny the existence of a deity, he arouses a wistful agnosticism in which the wonder of all possibilities is in itself divine. In the collection's titular poem, Howell settles on a basic metaphysic of love that resonates for the ages: "But love/ burns without consuming and weighs nothing."
Love's Last Number showcases a visionary mind and serves as a testament to the power of imagination in connecting human beings to each other. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist, poet and fiction author.