Publication Date: October 15, 2026
Paperback, 98 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-59-8
The End and The Beginning is autobiography in verse, beginning with Tony Howarth’s childhood in England (“six years old / I’m swept up by the crowd / everyone headed for Ravenscourt Park”). He recounts his boyhood war years (“I’m bundled on to train with Dad / evacuated from London / passed from auntie to uncle to auntie”) and an abrupt move to the States to join his mother (“a passport and ticket / on an aeroplane / to the United States”). There in postwar America, he forms deep friendships (“Win and me we’ve done a lot of talking / getting to know one another / ...I ask him...could we be room mates / he says sure”), and finds the love of his life (“I should buy a ring for Marna / my heart has made up its mind”). A stint in the army allows for a joyous and long-awaited reunion with his beloved father (“a tap on my shoulder / I turn with a huzza into his arms / so sharply that everything in our hands / scatters across the platform”), completing the circle of the title.
Praise for Tony Howarth & The End and The Beginning
What the poet called “the still, sad music of humanity” suffuses this thrumming ode on two timeless romances – between son and father, between lost youth and found love – with an aching beauty that will shimmer in the heart of every reader blessed to have taken a similar journey to selfhood.
—Jeremy Gerard, performing arts critic and biographer
Lovers of poetry and storytelling will be entranced by this sweeping story of a boy’s journey to manhood. Tony Howarth sets the reader down in England . . . in a time and place where war, family turmoil and deceit separate a young boy from the father he loves. Each narrative poem is like a snapshot as the boy struggles to make a place for himself wherever he lands. I was breathless at times as I followed the high-spirited boy’s determination to explore and endure whatever came along as he searched for the way to manhood, and to finding the father he was forced to leave behind.
—Sarah White, author of The Wanderlust: A South Carolina Folk Tale & others
Tony Howarth, known for his moving novels in verse, has written a triumphant contemporary
Odyssey—one that turns the narrative on its head and privileges the son's story and his poignant quest to rediscover his father. Throughout the book, we witness the ways that literature and love work to save the speaker as he bravely navigates the challenges of war, displacement, emigration, poverty, and familial lies. The End and The Beginning is a wonderful collection from a poet at the height of his powers.
—Jennifer Franklin, A Fire in Her Brain (Princeton University Press, 2027)
About the Author
Tony Howarth, a playwright, director, and former journalist, retired in 1991 after twenty-eight years as a teacher of English and theatre at Woodlands High School in Westchester County, New York. He began writing poetry in 2009 after a visit to William Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, in England’s Lake District, developing his craft at the Hudson Valley Writing Center under the treasured guidance of Jennifer Franklin and Fred Marchant. His poems have appeared in many magazines, among them Chronogram, The Naugatuck River Review, Obsessed with Pipework (England), The Connecticut River Review, Raven’s Perch, The Sow’s Ear, and the Grayson Press anthology Forgotten Women. His verse dramas Wild Man of the Mountain and A Hand to Hold, and his memoirs in verse, The Griefs That Fate Assigns and After the Storm, A Shaft of Sunlight were published by Broadstone Books.
Publication Date: October 15, 2026
Paperback, 98 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-59-8
The End and The Beginning is autobiography in verse, beginning with Tony Howarth’s childhood in England (“six years old / I’m swept up by the crowd / everyone headed for Ravenscourt Park”). He recounts his boyhood war years (“I’m bundled on to train with Dad / evacuated from London / passed from auntie to uncle to auntie”) and an abrupt move to the States to join his mother (“a passport and ticket / on an aeroplane / to the United States”). There in postwar America, he forms deep friendships (“Win and me we’ve done a lot of talking / getting to know one another / ...I ask him...could we be room mates / he says sure”), and finds the love of his life (“I should buy a ring for Marna / my heart has made up its mind”). A stint in the army allows for a joyous and long-awaited reunion with his beloved father (“a tap on my shoulder / I turn with a huzza into his arms / so sharply that everything in our hands / scatters across the platform”), completing the circle of the title.
Praise for Tony Howarth & The End and The Beginning
What the poet called “the still, sad music of humanity” suffuses this thrumming ode on two timeless romances – between son and father, between lost youth and found love – with an aching beauty that will shimmer in the heart of every reader blessed to have taken a similar journey to selfhood.
—Jeremy Gerard, performing arts critic and biographer
Lovers of poetry and storytelling will be entranced by this sweeping story of a boy’s journey to manhood. Tony Howarth sets the reader down in England . . . in a time and place where war, family turmoil and deceit separate a young boy from the father he loves. Each narrative poem is like a snapshot as the boy struggles to make a place for himself wherever he lands. I was breathless at times as I followed the high-spirited boy’s determination to explore and endure whatever came along as he searched for the way to manhood, and to finding the father he was forced to leave behind.
—Sarah White, author of The Wanderlust: A South Carolina Folk Tale & others
Tony Howarth, known for his moving novels in verse, has written a triumphant contemporary
Odyssey—one that turns the narrative on its head and privileges the son's story and his poignant quest to rediscover his father. Throughout the book, we witness the ways that literature and love work to save the speaker as he bravely navigates the challenges of war, displacement, emigration, poverty, and familial lies. The End and The Beginning is a wonderful collection from a poet at the height of his powers.
—Jennifer Franklin, A Fire in Her Brain (Princeton University Press, 2027)
About the Author
Tony Howarth, a playwright, director, and former journalist, retired in 1991 after twenty-eight years as a teacher of English and theatre at Woodlands High School in Westchester County, New York. He began writing poetry in 2009 after a visit to William Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, in England’s Lake District, developing his craft at the Hudson Valley Writing Center under the treasured guidance of Jennifer Franklin and Fred Marchant. His poems have appeared in many magazines, among them Chronogram, The Naugatuck River Review, Obsessed with Pipework (England), The Connecticut River Review, Raven’s Perch, The Sow’s Ear, and the Grayson Press anthology Forgotten Women. His verse dramas Wild Man of the Mountain and A Hand to Hold, and his memoirs in verse, The Griefs That Fate Assigns and After the Storm, A Shaft of Sunlight were published by Broadstone Books.
