Talking Cures

Poetry. Howard's title for his new collection is the old name for psychoanalysis, and alludes to the therapeutic powers of speech under controlled circumstances. For the most part these poems are spoken out of a solitude into a solitude, but passing through a company of some order, some chaos. There are a number of the poet's ecphrastic studies, to be expected in any of Howard's books since his Pulitzer Prize collection Untitled Subejcts (1970), and an ecphrastic variation: five poems spoken by early twentieth-century masters (James, Conrad, Meredith, Kipling, Cather) about movies they have seen-in certain cases from the Other Side-and regarded with varying suspicion. Other works by Richard Howard, TRAPPINGS and IF I DREAM I HAVE YOU, I HAVE YOU, are also available from SPD.