David Howard — Rāwaho: The Completed Poems

Cold Hub Press 2022 Paperback 329 Rāwaho: outsider, foreigner. In the poet's words: Many uncollected pieces served as preparatory studies for these 150 titles. Since my first tentative airing of the early drafts in 1991 there havebeen regular staging posts, in 2001 and 2011 respectively-the latter (The Incomplete Poems) with a note from Brian Turner: When David Howard calls his work 'incomplete' he is, I think, reminding us that just about everything, not just poems, is work in progress; hence 'incomplete'. And that still seems true, or at least no less true than it seemed then. What has changed with age ( decades destroy / your eye's glister ) is my ability to hold indefinitely the weight of inchoate drafts. This book has thousands of lines but in making it I am drawing one line. Heavy. Very Good