Jack, Love, and the Daily Grail, is a modern hero's attainment of the grail revealed in his widow's seventeen year long poetic journey. This is a love story of daily heroism, marriage and miracle.
Joan Howard’s poems, crafted like finely cut jewels, reflect a joyful and sustaining force in the natural world, even as the poet confronts a major loss. Whether she is kayaking on the lake “I glided into diamonds” or noting a solitary clematis blooming on her late husband’s birthday, she presents a remarkable tapestry of all our lives, in which, as William Blake wrote, “Joy and woe are woven fine.”
--Janice Townley Moore, author of
Teaching the Robins
Joan Howard’s collection is pure music: love songs, laments, hymns. She has an incredible ear for sound, including rhyme and meter. This, coupled with an eye and heart for discovering the sublime in nature, gives her poems a classical feel—a formality that ups the poignancy while keeping sentimentality at bay. These are short poems, packed with grief and wonder: “Let me go,” you said, and divine / ownership took you in a breath. Howard has written a profound tribute to her beloved. It is their story and her story: the hard and beautiful necessity of moving on while never forgetting.
--Karen Paul Holmes, author of
Untying the Knot
Poetry written in beauty leaves the reader with nourishing aftereffects. Happily, Howard’s sonnets, such as “Time Travel,” “The Secret,” and “Grace” shimmer with superb craft, evidence of a clear and powerful intelligence. Like those of Gerard Manley Hopkins, her use of word links:
lake wed,
these now years and
life hearts on, create new meanings and illuminations.
--Maren O. Mitchell, author
of
Beat Chronic Pain, An Insiders Guide
How refreshing to find a new collection of poems filled with sincerity that takes you through a deeply moving love story. With exquisite imagery, Joan Howard reveals the beauty of nature around her before piercing the heart with human truths.
--Glenda Barrett, Visual artist, author of
When the Sap Rises, and
The Beauty of Silence
Joan M. Howard earned a B.A. in German Literature at Indiana University, an M.A. from the University of Oregon. She studied in Munich, Germany, and at the University of Georgia. Howard is a former teacher and lives in Athens, Georgia, and on the beautiful waters of Lake Chatuge in Hiawassee, who enjoys birding, walking and kayaking. She is a member of North Carolina Writers Network, North Carolina Writers' Network-West, and the Georgia Poetry Society.
Jack, Love, and the Daily Grail, is Joan M. Howard's second publication. Her first poetry book is,
Death and Empathy: My Sister Web.
Joan’s husband was a professor of Medieval German at the University of Georgia. This book was written chronologically from 2000—2017.
