Return to Book Page Praise for Household Hints at the End of Time Review in the Globe and Mail Cruise Control A Theogony By Ken Howe AVAILABLE 0-88971-186-0 Nightwood Editions 5.25 x 7.5 · 128 pages Paperback · $15.95 September 2002 From Ken Howe, winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry, Cruise Control is an original, spirited and unforgettable homebrew concocted from his limitless thirst for philosophy and literature and his vigorous love of language. “Look out: here is a revved Ken Howe, erudite at 200 kph, funny, liturgical, elegiac. Enjoy the unparalled ride.” -Tim Lilburn "Ken Howe seems a genius at this genus, a di-jester of congestion and conjectural compression . . . Cross Christopher Dewdney's cenozoic perambulations with an architectural blueprint of a Gothic cathedral, and you get something that coughs like symphonic botany. Except it is in a car on the Trans-Canada Highway driving eastbound from Regina for three days, with a lonely, loony pilot imagining the pit stops as a gasoline-scented stations of the cross. Kerouac is a back-seat haint in Howe's car-as-confessional. . . . You get so mesmerized on the road with Howe that when he finally pulls up 72 hours later to a motel in Dundas, Ont., you swoon out of the car, dizzy at the oxygen and wondering, with him, "whether, climbing the steps, the fixity/ of this dwelling would suffice/ to quell the ongoing motion." This second collection from Howe will cruise any lucky reader home, or somewhere, busting through hypostatic spider webs, mosquitoes be damned." -Margaret Christakos, Globe and Mail "Howe's poems mostly take on the form of pseudo-scientific glosses on various aspects of modern life, including cars, mass culture and alienating architecture. They have a solemn tone, but are played for laughs . . . there's no question that he's smart, funny and eclectic. Read him when you've got the mental energy - and patience - to keep up." -Barbara Carey, Toronto Star