Howard, Richard 1929–: Critical Essay by John R. Reed

More than ever, Richard Howard's poems convey the sense of personal history transformed into a fable that is worth hearing. There is a powerful personality behind the poems of Fellow Feelings, and the individual pieces, from the opening poem "Decades," to "Howard's Way" and "Compulsive Qualifications," to "The Giant on Giant Killing" and "Vocational Guidance," convey this personality with a clarity that relates it to something larger, for the poems of Fellow Feelings are also about art, and thus the personal history that colors them becomes part of the larger story of the modern artist. It is a familiar story of wounds that must be turned to profit, of inspiration that comes mysteriously and cannot be denied, of achievement which solves nothing but makes the need to persist more acute.

The three finest poems in the volume are in the third section of the book, devoted mainly to works of art. All three poems demonstrate the insinuation of narrative into an essentially lyric poem. In the first of these, "The Giant on Giant Killing," inspired by Donatello's bronze statue of a sensuously appealing David, we have Goliath's account of how David defeated him. The basic story is familiar to us all, but Howard's version is surely unusual, for it suggests that Goliath was willingly defeated in order to be near the beautifully young David for whom he had conceived a strong passion. "In "Vocational Guidance," the subject is Simone Martini's Annunciation. Again the story is familiar, assuming we know that an angel appeared to Mary announcing that she was to be the mother of Christ. Once more the story is transformed, for Howard finds in the details of the painting parallels with his own case, and with the case of any artist who feels inspiration come like an angel bearing the questionably welcome news that he must bring to birth a work of art. (p. 88)

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