Paper Trail
Selected Prose, 1965-2003
(amazon)Richard Howard (View Bio)
Hardcover: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003.
"If Richard Howard were not a poet at all, he would stand out nevertheless as a translator, an editor, a teacher of poets (most recently at Columbia University) and a critic of French, English and American literature. PAPER TRAIL collects his arrestingly elaborate essays on all three, as well as Howard's writings on visual art. The poems, like the essays, show unrivaled erudition, exemplary intellect, genuine wisdom and unusual attention to contexts, conversations, interactions, to all that makes us real to other people, and gives us evidence of our own past — evidence few poets, these days, even seek." — Washington Post
"His essays, no less than his poems, are outsize, buoyant performances.... Howard's essays, more than most, are about process — the wayward, spontaneous flux of a lively mind in headlong literary discourse, often interrupting itself. They have the authentic feel of a speaking voice." — The New York Times Book Review
