Inner Voices - by Richard Howard (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The poems of Richard Howard are noted for their unique dramatic force and for preserving, in their graceful, exquisitely wrought lines, human utterance at its most urbane. Inner Voices, the first volume to draw together material from Howard's twelve books of poems, leaves no doubt as to why he has been called "a powerful presence in American poetry for 40 years" (The New York Times Book Review).

Review Quotes

"A long-awaited and meticulously chosen selection of the work of one of our few poetic masters." --John Hollander

"This volume . . . establishes [Howard] as Robert Browning's authentic heir at rendering the inner voices of the cultural past and present." --Harold Bloom

"Inner Voices is a wonder." --Anthony Hecht

"Howard's entire project is one of recovery, the exquisitely American need to create what Van Wyck Brooks called . . . a usable past . . . The very expanse of his sentences, their twist and torque, is an American dream of plentitude." --James Longenbach, Boston Review

About the Author

Richard Howard (1929-2022) was a poet, essayist, translator, and editor, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection Untitled Subjects. His renowned translations of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Tzvetan Todorov introduced them and many other French writers to English readers. The poet laureate of New York State from 1993 to 1995, Howard was also a writing professor in the School of the Arts at Columbia University and taught English at the University of Houston.

Howard's books include Paper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965-2003, Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003, Alone With America: The Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950, and A Progressive Education.