Moonlight Saving Time

Andrew Vaisius is a Winnipeg daycare director.

Howell’s third collection of poetry, Moonlight Saving Time, contains a
number of rather talky poems, some humorous and reflective ones, but
none that would inspire me to recommend them unequivocally to friend or
foe.

To begin with, his humor can quickly get derailed by its facile
quality. Secondly, Howell tends to use rhyme—not the rhyme schemes we
studied during our Death to Poetry 101 class in high school—but
interesting change-ups and off-rhythms. Mostly his approach refreshes
with the lovely sound of words bounding about the poems, yet he strides
directly toward tedium with his overused back-to-back rhymes like
“dream green” “projected rejection,” “shallow hollow,” and
“mist insist.” These sound forcefully contrived and serve mainly to
distract from the poems. Howell writes about dogs, baseball, and beach
walks in nice poems. The passion seems left out.