Jason Gray On Ben Howard Ben Howard taught me everything I know about poetry. I've had teachers since, and very good ones, but the way I write can be traced back to him. His beautiful, meditative blank verse and his lyric investigations of nature have been a profound influence on my own work.
Ben recently retired from Alfred University, where he taught his entire career. He was the best teacher any beginning poet could ask for. A highly intelligent man, steeped in poetic tradition and literature as a whole. He knows how to write. He knows his meter and rhyme, is one of metrical writing's best practitioners, and was able to ground young poets in it to train their ears, so that they could go on and write in whatever style they chose, but to do so with a deepened sense of rhythm and a knowledge of the history of their craft.
Ben's poetry is collected in five volumes spanning nearly 40 years. His first three books, Father of Waters, Northern Interior, and Lenten Anniversaries, were brought out as fine art letterpress editions from Abattoir and Cummington Presses, and not widely available. In these three books, one can read his early lyrics, iambic, heterometric, even free verse, and see his moving towards the blank verse that forms the backbone of his masterwork, the verse novella Midcentury (Salmon). His latest book, Dark Pool (Salmon), appends that with a final sequence, "The Holy Alls," along with later lyrics.
The poem here, "Right Livelihood," is one he wrote on the occasion of his retirement. I'm biased, being mentioned in it, so I won't make any judgment. But I do hope it opens our readers to his very estimable work.
Columbus, OH
April 28, 2007