In a brief span of pages Tony Howarth brings to life the outsider artist Dag, and Molly, the owner of the diner where Dag finds both coffee (with milk, three sugars) but more importantly, understanding. It should come as no surprise that Tony Howarth's debut poetry chapbook takes the form of a "drama in verse," for it draws on his considerable experience in the theater. Or that his attention to fine detail and compact narrative reflect his background as a journalist. His years as an educator show in the lessons here about human nature and the values of empathy and kindness. But with this book he now firmly adds poet to his list of achievements. In a brief span of pages he brings to life the outsider artist Dag, and Molly, the owner of the diner where Dag finds both coffee (with milk, three sugars) but more importantly, understanding. Like Dag creating his art from refuse, Howarth creates an entire world out of the fragments of Dag's life. As Dag struggles to create his art and his life, he finds another companion in the sculpture of a broken angel; but it is Dag himself who is the broken angel of this story, a spirit unsuited to life in our fallen world, but perhaps one who redeems us through his art and his example. Poetry. Drama.

In a brief span of pages Tony Howarth brings to life the outsider artist Dag, and Molly, the owner of the diner where Dag finds both coffee (with milk, three sugars) but more importantly, understanding. It should come as no surprise that Tony Howarth's debut poetry chapbook takes the form of a "drama in verse," for it draws on his considerable experience in the theater. Or that his attention to fine detail and compact narrative reflect his background as a journalist. His years as an educator show in the lessons here about human nature and the values of empathy and kindness. But with this book he now firmly adds poet to his list of achievements. In a brief span of pages he brings to life the outsider artist Dag, and Molly, the owner of the diner where Dag finds both coffee (with milk, three sugars) but more importantly, understanding. Like Dag creating his art from refuse, Howarth creates an entire world out of the fragments of Dag's life. As Dag struggles to create his art and his life, he finds another companion in the sculpture of a broken angel; but it is Dag himself who is the broken angel of this story, a spirit unsuited to life in our fallen world, but perhaps one who redeems us through his art and his example. Poetry. Drama.

The first full-length collection from poetry/playwright Tony Howarth, three stylistically and thematically diverse dramas linked by the power of basic human decency to change lives. Journalist turned educator turned playwright turned poet Tony Howarth is on a mission to restore the grand tradition of verse drama. In his first full-length collection, consisting of three plays, a man helps a girl escape forced marriage and sexual bondage in John Smithís despotic colonial Virginia; the poet Anna Akhmatova communes with other women waiting outside a Leningrad prison in Stalinist Russia; and in the present day, a man who first lost his father to childhood divorce and distance deals with the anguish of losing him again in adulthood to the ravages of age and dementia. Composed in styles as diverse as their themes, what connects these three dramas is the power of basic human decency to change lives, of a caring hand to hold reaching out across the darkness. "Tony Howarthís ability to evoke different eras in different styles is more than just a virtuoso performance. Each verse drama is heart rending, perfectly realized and in language so beautiful it takes the breath away. His "Fragile souls joining hands in a lonely world," reach out to us across space and time. Grab hold!"--John MacLean, author of The Long Way Home "In language both lyrical and dramatic, reminiscent, in places, of Robert Browning's monologues, and in other moments of Louis Simpson's plain-spoken narrative poetry, Tony Howarth dismantles the myths of history and memory, country and family. He transports the reader from seventeenth-century Virginia to Russia in Akhmatova's time to the tender and agonizing complexities of the present. Always, in these thought-provoking, moving verse dramas, life's hardships are met with quiet heroism. This is poetry under pressure, in the best sense, forging new forms."--Tracy Daugherty, author of Snow and Straw Poetry. Drama. History. Family & Relationships.

The Shakespearean Forest, Anne Barton's final book, uncovers the pervasive presence of woodland in early modern drama, revealing its persistent imaginative power. The collection is representative of the startling breadth of Barton's scholarship: ranging across plays by Shakespeare (including Titus Andronicus, As You Like It, Macbeth, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Timon of Athens) and his contemporaries (including Jonson, Dekker, Lyly, Massinger and Greene), it also considers court pageants, treatises on forestry and chronicle history. Barton's incisive literary analysis characteristically pays careful attention to the practicalities of performance, and is supplemented by numerous illustrations and a bibliographical essay exploring recent scholarship in the field. Prepared for publication by Hester Lees-Jeffries, featuring a Foreword by Adrian Poole and an Afterword by Peter Holland, the book explores the forest as a source of cultural and psychological fascination, embracing and illuminating its mysteriousness.