Midcentury by Ben Howard Salmon Publishing 1997 From the book:       I can't begin to say what brought me here, Unless it be the Irish predilections For whiskey and horses, both of which entail A certain risk and a less-than-certain gain. To be a middle-aged American In Dublin in the middle of a war, Of which we're hearing more or less than nothing, And that in fragment, bits of veracity- A mutilated bulletin, a headline- Is to see one's lot reflected in the stories That come to us distorted, if at all: Stories of heroism, sacrifice, Or, more often, utter devastation.

Listen to Professor Howard read Reticence, Release, or Interrogations. These poems were published in Midcentury (1996). (requires Real Audio Player)

Ben Howard's fourth collection takes the form of a verse novella set in 1940s Ireland.

I can't begin to say what brought me here, confesses the narrator of Midcentury, an American lexicographer, down on his luck, who turns to Ireland in hopes of finding solace in the landscape and a respite in Ireland's wartime neutrality. Seeking definitions in a culture which resists them, he discovers in Irish history a refraction of his fortunes and obsessions. Midcentury tells an engrossing story of defeat and recovery, of devastation and spiritual renewal. Earlier versions of some of these poems first appeared in Sewanee Review, Seneca Review, and Chelsea.

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Reviews of Midcentury:

Michael Stephens, Irish Echo, October 21-27, 1996:

Narrative poems reveal Ireland at midcentury

MIDCENTURY by Ben Howard, Salmon Publishing (Cliffs of Moher, Co. Clare, Ireland), 80 pp., 5.99

"The American poet Ben Howard has written his homage to Ireland with "Midcentury". Howard is the author of three other collections of poetry and one of the finest essay collections on Irish literature, "The Pressed Melodeon" (Story Line Press, 1996). He is a professor of English at Alfred University, and frequently travels to Ireland when he is not teaching.

Apparently Ben Howard has observed Ireland well, if "Midcentury" is any indication of his obsession. Howard is not a mere observer of Irish surfaces, though. He probes its soul through its history, and "Midcentury," besides being a collection of poetry, is an historical primer of the Irish world at its midcentury.

Howard is a dramatic poet, and the poems in this collection are dramatic narratives, mostly about an unnamed American man who happens to find himself in Ireland during and after World War II. If one wishes to find out what Ireland was like after this catastrophic event, read Howard's book to discover the subtle transformation that Ireland underwent during and after the war.

"Midcentury" consists of six longish poems, the narrative of this unnamed American's life in Ireland. It begins in Dublin with a poem entitled "The Word from Dublin, 1944." The narrative ends five poems later in 1950, also in Dublin, with a poem entitled "Across the Water."

The entire book is written in blank verse. In fact, Ben Howard is a poet equal to another great American blank verse writer--Robert Frost. Both of these writers create an iambic pentameter that is deceptively simple, that first appears rather optimistic, but upon more careful reading, presents a darker side to our lives. Ireland in 1944 is no different than Frost's chilly New England landscapes 25 years earlier. Perhaps it all comes down to that Beckettian notion of the sin of being born, a concept as Irish as "Danny Boy," though far less sentimental, obviously.

These unsentimental poems are chiseled from this austere blank verse. Ben Howard wields this measure like a great sculptor finding the shape n the veins of rock. His stones are words, though, and our Michelangelo, oddly enough, is an upstate New York poet by way of Iowa who has found his soul in the Georgian world of Dublin.

"Midcentury" reads more like a novel than a collection of poetry because of its charaterizing and storyline. The narrator is a middle-aged American, he says, "in Dublin in the middle of a war."

This is a lonely man, far from home and family, newly divorced, but also even more newly separated from a turbulent love affair. Ireland draws him near with its hospitality but also because it is "itself no stranger to intestine wars." Hitler and Churchill are mentioned in passing, almost as if the war is too far from Ireland to comment beyond that.

Along the way, we learn that this 48-year-old is a lexicographer, one who knows his Irish history, but also one who drinks too much Irish whiskey. Soon after the war, he finds himself in Dingle. Then a year in Kerry follows, and in this section the narrator contemplates the idea of a mother tongue, particularly the Irish-speaking one in the Gaeltacht, which in turn, produces a meditation on his own stern, unforgiving mother.

In 1947, he is back in Dublin, a city that agrees with Howard's persona immensely. This section is entitled "Spitting Forgiven," and may be the best selection in the book. Here the iambic pentameter, rock-like on the page, almost seems to have feet that dance.

Ireland struggles economically after the war; things are rationed. Nature no longer seems to be the long reverie of the Irish landscapes in the countryside; it is now about wanting and longing and loss, the end result of the devastating war in Europe. The narrator contemplates Cromwell's bloody, intolerant reign, and he reflects that he has a problem with a rigid moral order, too.

Elegant, elegiac, casual yet moving, Ben Howard's poetry is both contempory and classic. It spans eras and countries, fusing a fictional voice with a poet's own real obsessions. Ben Howard, besides being a fine poet, is a classical guitarist. The structure of "Midcentury" is like a great symphony, the kind that, moment to moment, is intimate, and yet its overall reach is almost beyond human grasp. Ben Howard has an enormous talent for poetry, and at times, though human-sized and human-voiced, its final effect is prodigious."

Eugene O'Connell, The Examiner, (Cork, Ireland), 2-28-98:

"The wonder of Ben Howard's Midcentury, a verse novella set in 1940s Ireland, is how a sensible, middle-aged, recently divorced American Lexicographer could find himself "abroad like any common tramp traipsing the unfashionable boreens and backwaters of drab war-time Ireland."

The setting of the book during The Emergency is a literary device to enable the poet to explore the turmoil of his own emotional state and plot a new direction for his life.

Howard is no misty-eyed, shillelagh-wielding Yank, though, and his lexicographer's pen has the uncanny knack of tucking itself just beneath the skin to expose the complex human and physical geography of a very rawand emotionally scarred country. This unique book, narrated in an ordered rhyming couplet style, can be read on one level as a map of his physical journeying to places like Gallarus in Dingle, Yeats' West and the Dublin of Swift, but on another and deeper level as a map of his own emotional state and how that state reacts and responds to landscape. Howard is searching for his own roots. . . and for the genetically inherited keys that might unlock the secrets to the troubled history of his own family where as a boy, in typical Irish fashion, his mother ladled on the guilt in dollops: "Putting my drab supper on the table, / Her back bent in a posture of submission, / She dished out more than meat and mashed potatoes. / It's your funeral, she liked to say. . ."

Ben Howard was a totally new voice to me and has produced in Midcentury a beautifully wrought and memorable meditation on modern Ireland, warts and all."