Howard Altmann interrogates the sky, the light, the world, about their
intentions. If he seldom finds reassuring answers, he finds something
better: 'When all that consoled consoles no longer / loneliness finds a
room inside the one it knows.' These poems are as essential as a glass
of water.--John Ashbery
Though not exactly a nature poet, Howard Altmann is a poet of his own
mysterious kingdom, 'a house' in which he has built a house, whose walls
are open to the inspiration of air. ('Frightened of the next life /
being exactly like this life / he asked to be a bird' or 'Let it not be
words / you reach for you say-- / where the trees stand / far from
men'). To have discovered this kingdom and inhabited it (like Keats'
Imagination, as monk to monastery)--to have found words for what is
nearly unsayable--is a measure of this poet's uncanny transformational
gift. Enter the house of these poems and stay on, a grateful tenant in
this remarkable state of wonder.--Carol Muske-Dukes
Howard Altmann has found a way to make language transform itself. If the
elusive moment between I and Thou could speak, it might be one of his
quietly amazing lines--'you ask the silence to invert itself / like a
gymnast in the dark . . . ' Without a trace of rhetoric, In This House
reminds us of the power of poetry: to show us how to live in a world in
which we are strangers. It's a thrill to come close to such an original
and deeply realized art.--Dennis Nurkse
Howard Altmann lives in New York City but he was born and raised in
Montreal, Canada, where he graduated from McGill University. He received
his MBA from Stanford University and worked as senior vice president of
a real estate investment company. He has taught poetry at a women's
prison in Manhattan, and he has written children's stories and plays. He
is the author of The Johnsons and The Thompsons, which was published
by Playscripts, Inc., in 2008. Poems from In This House have appeared
in Poetry, Ploughshares, New England Review, and Open City.