Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Household Hints for the End of Time
    Household Hints for the End of Time
    Household Hints for the End of Time
    Ebook109 pages42 minutes

    Household Hints for the End of Time

    By Ken Howe

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Winner of the 2001 Anne Szumigalski Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the 2001 Regina Book Award (Saskatchewan Book Awards). Shortlisted for the 2002 Gerald Lampert Award and longlisted for the 2002 ReLit Awards.

    A wide-ranging reckless intelligence, verbal audacity and irrepressible humour -- all these combine with a large-hearted embrace of existence in Ken Howe's poems. Whether they are observing, with fine ironic wit, the vagaries of domestic life, elegizing lost ones, or raised in celebration of musical compositions, they remind us of the need to address the world with all our faculties alert, including a language alive with its native energy and luminosity.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateJun 15, 2001
    ISBN9781771312943
    Household Hints for the End of Time
    Author

    Ken Howe

    Ken Howe was born in Edmonton, grew up in Beaverlodge, Alberta, and now lives in Regina with his friendly pit bull Zuki. He has played principal horn with the Regina Symphony for eight years. Ken is a member of the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and R. Murray Schaeffer’s Wolf Project. The manuscript for Household Hints for the End of Time was awarded a John V. Hicks Manuscript Award in 2000. Ken also received the 2000 City of Regina Writing Award. In March 2001 he won a Canada Council grant to write more poems.

    Related to Household Hints for the End of Time

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Stranger Places

      Aug 9, 2018

      It began like any normal pregame in the woods. Naked, alone, hungover, a sweaty sleeping bag in the back of a dusty pickup truck, miles from civilization. Predawn in a narrow Utah river bottom, canyon country, early July. A Thermos of lukewarm coffee

      18 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Pandemic Can’t Lock Down Nature

      Apr 9, 2020

      Needing to clear my head, I went down to the Penobscot River. There they were, swimming with the mergansers, following an early pulse of river herring to the mouth of Kenduskeag stream: two harbor seals, raising sleek round heads for a few long breat

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 1, 2023

      In the popular belief, ghosts are a selecting tribe, avoiding millions, speaking to one. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Demonology,” North American Review, 1877 Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose he

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Mar 4, 2024

      To Err Is Human; to Forgive, Supine —S. J. Perelman, Baby, It’s Cold Inside, 1970 You must know the bees have come early this year too: I see them visit aster, sweet Williams, bleeding hearts, and azalea blossoms hardy enough to not have crisped with

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Jan 5, 2022

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 3, 2024

      In my experience the spider is the smallest creature whose gaze can be felt. —Iris Murdoch, Under the Net, 1954 Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred i

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Oct 12, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS

      Jun 24, 2021

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters

      Jun 15, 2023

      Fortean Times never fails to provide me with something to think about, but rarely as much as the assertion that mass panics like Havana syndrome and transdermal fentanyl overdoses have become “endemic and long term” [FT430:7]. I’d previously assumed

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What’s In The Water

      May 10, 2019

      What’s In The Water
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2023

      1. Wine-makers say it’s the complex flavorcreated by the singular terrain of place: the kinds of minerals in the soilfiltered through the soft pulse and coil of earthworms; the curl of fog that snakesaround blushed grapes like wisps of smoke; the tas

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 3, 2019

      And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. —Ogden Nash, “Everybody Tells Me Everything,” The Face Is Familiar, 1941 Someone goes by wearing a

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend

      Jun 17, 2020

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Town & Country Notebook

      Jun 26, 2024

      1) Which member of The Beatles died in 2001? 2) With skin ranging from yellow-orange to bright red, what is a tamarillo? 3) What army rank is immediately above Lance-Corporal? 4) The Montgolfier brothers pioneered which method of transport? 5) The du

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Town & Country Notebook

      Jun 28, 2023

      1) The word ovine refers to which animals? 2) Boudicca was the ruler of which East Anglian tribe? 3) What cordial is made from the flowers of Sambucus nigra? 4) Which famous spy-novel writer also wrote children’s book Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang? 5) What

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters

      Aug 10, 2023

      Reading the article ‘Here’s sick in your eye’ [FT431:50] reminded me of a book entitled We Are Electric by Sally Adee. In this we read that Alexander von Humboldt inserted a silver wire connected to a galvanic pile into his rectum from which he exper

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Roger’S PROFANISAURUS

      Aug 4, 2022

      [email protected] air fryer 1. n. Device for making chips that won’t fur up your arteries. 2. n. A highcalorie food’s ghost exorcised from the premises of one who enjoys an unusually high-fat diet. Alan Sugar’s beard n. A straggly, threadbare f

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Good Vibrations

      Mar 4, 2024

      Good Vibrations
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters

      Jul 15, 2021

      Regarding ‘Hunting Bigfoot’, in “Creatures on the Loose” [FT405:26]: adopting Justin Humphrey’s position on the reality of Bigfoot, surely one would be required to establish its nature before designating it a suitable subject for the huntsman. If it

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters

      Nov 5, 2020

      Sadly, the wonderfully prescient quotation from Samuel Pepys [FT397:70], “A dram in exchange for the pox is an ill bargain indeed,” is not by the great diarist, but from a spoof Twitter account. (https://londonist.com/london/books-and-poetry/samuel-p

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      May 8, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 1, 2022

      Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. —Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” tr. by Clare C

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      May 18, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Feb 2, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Feb 2, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Household Hints for the End of Time

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Household Hints for the End of Time - Ken Howe

      Ken Howe

      Brick Books

      National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

      Howe, Ken, 1960–

           Household hints for the end of time

      Poems

      ISBN 1-894078-16-0

           1. Title

      PS8565.O8558H68   2001       C811’.6 C2001-900744-2

      PR9199.3.H69H68   2001

      Copyright©Ken Howe 2001.

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing programme. The support of the Ontario Arts Council is also gratefully acknowledged.

      Cover art: Trees by Otto Rogers.

      The author’s photograph is by Brad Martin.

      Design and layout by Alan Siu.

      Printed and bound by Sunville Printco Inc.

      Brick Books

      431 Boler Road, Box 20081

      London, Ontario N6K 4G6

      [email protected]

      In Memoriam

      Carol Loberg/Pfeiffer

      1963-1988

      Contents

      The Ambient Geography

      Snow Epiphanies

      Notes on the Urban Squirrel

      Notes on Stanfield’s Red, Duofold, Long Underwear

      The Annotated Urban Magpie

      Canadian Rockies Trailguide: Iceline Trail

      1. Yoho Approach

      2. Yoho Lake Bypass

      3. Iceline

      In the Closed Ecology of the Home

      The Deconsecration of a House (in steps)

      Tomatonotes

      Assorted Views of Chocolate Cake

      Notes on Mushrooms

      A Refrigerator

      A Window

      A Microwave Dish

      A Cider Bottle

      Nothing Scary in the House

      A Maid in Hell

      ¡Hola Chele! A Voyage South

      A Maid in Hell

      Absent Friends

      Elegy for My Friend Carol

      On the Birth of Katherine Anne Martin

      Max’s Bath

      Going to a Movie (The Bruce Lee Story) with Lynn

      Illustrated Advertisement for Jerry’s Barber Shop, 77th Street, 1992

      Preparatory Exercises for Valentine’s Day

      Recollected Reflection on Valentine’s Day

      Valentine #9 (Phone)

      Valentine for You to Pass on to Your Sister

      Valentine #7

      Valentine #11

      Valentine #17

      Valentine #15

      Fluff is the Enemy of Music

      Translation of Richard Dehmel’s Verklärte Nacht, framed by Schoenberg

      A Noonhour Piano Recital in which Catherine Donkin in her Woollen Sweater plays Débussy’s Les sons et les parfums tournant dans l’air du soir

      Quatuor pour la fin du temps, Banff Centre, 1994

      Free Translation of Mahler’s "Ging Heut’ Morgen übers Feld"

      Pedagogy of the Orchestral Horn

      Anton Bruckner: Fourth Symphony, First Movement

      Acknowledgements

      Biography

      The Ambient

      Geography

      Snow Epiphanies

      1. Into the windblown thaw and an element

      of cat (felis domesticus) on the wet

      wind. Brown footprints and the red

      and white blank steer face butcher sign

      luminous as the light

      declines. How

      we must love this snow to be

      cleaning up after it

      over and over.

      2. Brown kidney pool prints in the squashed drugstore

      floormat. A man buying hairspray with nickels,

      slow Parkinson’s movements and the night

      clumping down on both of us. Counting.

      Stars, the disappointed stars

      in their spiney jackets, shivering down

      on the snowcapped parking range.

      3. Any Canadian must have several psychologies of snow including: the rooftop snow and snow sneaking up around the shutters, the terraced spruce tree snow, the warm late-day-waking-up snow pressed in a wall against the window, sun-setting-on-early-spring’s-ephemeral snow, the valley-hushed-and-white-with-snow snow, the rubbed-into-your-burning-skin-and-dribbling-between-your-flushed-shoulderblades-onto-the-hot-sheets snow.

      4. Two identical snowflakes, unusual in my experience,

      or rather, one snowflake, flutters by, but identical

      to one I remember seeing in Edmonton in 1966,

      in Emily Murphy Park on a March afternoon

      (when I was more likely to notice that sort of thing)

      as I stepped into the same river twice, once.

      5. The moon pressing its crumbly face

      against the amniotic membrane of the day

      and from the aluminum of my shovel the sky

      blue grey. What is the faint sunlight

      saying to me, the wet wind high overhead,

      weeds and sand on the exposed hillside, un-named

      angel of annunciation among grimy roots?

      Notes on the Urban Squirrel

      "I think this

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1