Ghost Ship, by Robert J. Howe

Poetry, chapbook, 48 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Ghost Ship is a collection of poems about looking into the abyss and seeing a familiar face; loss and the private language we invent to remember. The work that comprises this chapbook was mined from the seam where the inner self touches the outer world, and so is a museum of contusions and lacerations collected over decades.

From birth we are preparing for departure from the world, but in the Anthropocene, the world is also departing from us. The signals are attenuated as we pull apart—news of each other is slow, fragmentary, and prone to misinterpretation.

Nostalgia is grief. Memory is the geography of time—we all wish we’d paid more attention in the moment, atop the peaks and in the valleys. This chapbook is about our travels by sea, by land, and by years.

Robert J. Howe has less pursued a career than a series of book jacket jobs that seemed like a good idea at the time. He has been a darkroom technician, coastguardsman, merchant seaman, writer, security guard, bagel baker, electrician, public relations guy, tutor, teacher, and veterinary technician. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, photographer Eleanor Lang.