Professor Howd Publishes Fifth Collection of Poetry
The Orchard Street Press is pleased to announce the release of Universal Monsters, an exciting new poetry collection by Eric Machan Howd of Ithaca, New York.
Of Universal Monsters, Richard Jackson, author of Broken Horizons and Where the Wind Comes From, writes: “…these myths (monsters, fears, and phantoms that haunt us) are not myths but the emptiness we all feel at one time or another….each poem is a struggle to articulate, and it is words that fill the emptiness…..Few poets have the ability to face these issues and find a counter music where ‘the robin sings/red breast pulsing…/so beautiful/so vibrant.’ In the end, then, what we do feel is a master poet filling an impossible emptiness with incredible passion.”
Leslie Ullman, author of The You That All Along Has Housed You and Library of Small Happiness writes: “…this collection offers a compassionate and holographic take on monster-hood, from Frankenstein’s monster as a nocturnal gardener…to goth girlfriend ‘creeping behind my tongue’…to flashes of a deceased father given to violence. Some of these renditions are vividly surreal, others subtle and insightful as the speaker contemplates the possibility of monster also as iterations of himself…These poems are candid, musical, and beautifully crafted…”
Natasha Saje’, author of Terrior: Love Out of Place, observes: “These artful and various poems describe ways in which humans represent evil—and beauty, the two forever twined. ‘Wind arranges wind’ in their music. Readers will simultaneously be haunted by ‘words…too heavy for paper’ and delighted by the delicate touch of a poet who recognizes ‘all who have loved and lost/something to the earth.’”
You can purchase your copy of the collection directly from the publisher by visiting the following website: