Powerful and acutely relevant, Howie's verse grips the reader with accessible lines and unique metaphors while exploring psychological hunger in poems such as "Meditation on a Candle Flame" and "fragments of my ruin," and the vast realm of social pain in poems such as "Dead Peasants" and "August 6, 1945." From Red & Gold: "Things shine/as if we swindled/the sun/out of its gold..."