Kath Howell

Highly praised by other poets and artists, BRUSH WITH REALITY is a collection of poems and drawings about ordinary wonders and extraordinary routines. The delights of daily living are celebrated by poet/artist Kath Howell. The doubts of the faithful honored. The fearful hopes that make our world go round affirmed. Between the lines of words and pictures, hopeful fears are acknowledged, black and white sometimes relieved in color. The delightfully creative book includes more than 100 original drawings, including a special eight-page "Color Gallery." “Real poetry,” says one contemporary critic, “contains that nearly impossible combination of poetry as a game—a game we play with words, where we put them together and create sounds, and resonance, and evocations, and rhythms, and tunes—and, simultaneously, poetry as a spiritual calling. It is a way of exploring the great (and maybe not so great) mysteries of our own existence. A real poem operates simultaneously on both levels. It satisfies the pattern-making, game-making side of our imagination, and it also feeds our souls.” Yes, BRUSH WITH REALITY is real poetry. The poems in this wide-ranging collection were written (and rewritten) by Kath Howell between 1962 and 2002. They arose from the poet's concerns with prevailing currents in America during those years: rural and urban sprawling toward suburbia; the inclusion of TV as neighbor as well as icon; the image as advertised, graven or not. References to theater, art, the Middle Ages and the Bible are the common ground -- the public space -- for personal events: growing up, and old; going to school, to war, to work. The drawings and paintings illustrate the challenge to perspective of these juxtapositions.