The Chesapeake Bay and the hardy denizens who eke out a livelihood from or near its unpredictable waters are the stuff of legend. Ann Howells, having grown up in this beautiful and often storm-ravaged region, returns to her homeland with haunting memory and detail, evoking, in exquisitely wrought poetry, the family members and friends who nurtured her and the unforgettable life experiences which honed the very essence of her soul. Not since the distinguished achievement of Dave Smith has a poet captured the Chesapeake Bay culture with the power and authority of Ann Howells.Larry D. Thomas, Member, Texas Institute of Letters,2008 Texas Poet Laureate
Dallas poet and editor Ann Howells left rural Maryland's shore long ago, but that region of mists and dangerous work on the water never left her. In So Long As We Speak Their Names, she beautifully, evocatively recreates the world she grew up with and in. She brings us not just that marshy land where land meets sea, but even more so, the watermen who risk their lives hauling their livings from the sea, and of course their children and wives, who wait, pray, and hope the sea won't take their men forever. It's a hard life, a dangerous life, but as one character states, "I'm cast iron." The lives portrayed here should never be forgotten. We should indeed speak their names, but even more, read their stories, over and over.
Robert Cooperman, Author of In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains, winner of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry
Take a waterglobe that includes the coves of Whidbey Island, and the weather, and weathered people of "The Shipping News", place it gently, with calloused hands, into the area of the Chesapeake Bay, and you have So Long As We Speak Their Names, a glorious collection by Ann Howells. Where names are old-fashioned but work ethic isn't, this is set in the time of our parents and their parents, where each cruel winter brings new widows, and everyone has just a drop of "that damned Twilley blood!"
I loved this collection. The watermen and their women-Ann taught me all about them. I want to eat wild asparagus, stain my lips purple with berries, learn how to can for the winter. This is not a book I'll read and put away, I'll keep it close-at-hand forever. And I bet you will too.
Tobi Alfier, Co-Editor San Pedro River Review, Blue Horse Press
