In this extraordinary new collection by distinguished poet Christopher Howell, the opening poem presents us with a spiritual paradox that will echo throughout its pages. The speaker remembers an earlier time of happiness, freedom, and a certain innocence. The poem closes with:         And if he remembers now         he is in love, which is the soul’s condition, and alone         because that is how we live. "How we live" is the book's major inquiry; its illustration, the poems' major achievement. How do we live, in our dailiness, in our loves, our private and global wars? And, in the face of unbearable grief, how can we live? Keats When Keats, at last beyond the curtain of love’s distraction, lay dying in his room on the Piazza di Spagna, the melody of the Bernini Fountain “filling him like flowers,” he held his breath like a coin, looked out into the moonlight and thought he saw snow. He did not suppose it was fever or the body’s weakness turning the mind. He thought, “England!” and there he was, secretly, for the rest of his improvidently short life: up to his neck in sleigh bells and the impossibly English cries of street venders, perfect and affectionate as his soul. For days the snow and statuary sang him so far beyond regret that if now you walk rancorless and alone there, in the piazza, the white shadow of his last words to Severn, “Don’t be frightened,” may enter you. "No excerpt of any of the poems will help you understand the poignancy and meaning in these poems. Read them. Read them all. It will change your life."― Salem Statesman Journal "Chris Howell is probably the most gifted poet in America..He tends to write magnificent lyrical poems, but Light's Ladder is filled with narrative poems and they are tremendous."― Redactions: Poetry and Poetics The fourth volume in the distinguished Pacific Northwest Poetry Series ― University of Washington Press Christopher Howell's eleventh collection of poems, Love's Last Number , was published in 2017 by Milkweed Editions. His poems, essays, and translations have also appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including Antioch Review , Colorado Review, Crazy Horse, Denver Quarterly, Field, Gettysburg Review, Harper's, Hudson Review, Iowa Review, Northwest Review, Poetry Northwest, Southern Review , and Volt . He has been the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, two National Endowment Fellowships, two fellowships from the Artist Trust, and the Stanley W. Lindberg Award for Editorial Excellence. Howel is the director and principal editor for Lynx House Press. Howell is also editor of Willow Springs Books, director of the Eastern Washington University Press, and on the faculty of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University. He lives in Spokane, Washington.