Lloyd Howell - Unificationist Poet Surprises the Literati on Long Island

Generation Text likely hasn’t heard of Unificationist Lloyd Howell, a 59-year-old mechanical engineer living with his family in Lake Ronkonkoma, New York, but among the poets of Long Island, he is a marvel. Having come out of nowhere in March, he surprised the crowd of local poets by winning first prize in the Mid-Island Y Jewish Community Center’s annual contest, which was judged by Nassau County’s poet laureate, Gayl Teller. Although Lloyd had been writing poetry as a hobby for years, this was the first poetry competition he had entered. “I just sort of came out of the woodwork,” he says.

Ms. Teller explained his accomplishment at a March 15 awards dinner this way: “His writing shows a keen sense of how language can transmute within the framework of a poem into larger, more profound substance. And he makes his transformations with clarity, precision, terseness, and great compassion.”

Lloyd competed against scores of seasoned poets in the area, of whom 24 also were honored at the March gathering. “It’s quite an achievement because the competition was fierce. There are some wonderful poets in Nassau County,” Ms. Teller tells Familyfed.org. In his poem, “Amnesia,” she writes, “Life the axe / swings/ toppling trees. As the trees get transformed into wooden creations, they ultimately personify into human alienation. His tones shift to suit his thematic stance.”

Life the axe swings toppling trees to be milled into boards, posts, rails and planks transported to a distant destination where they meet again as studs, plywood, decking, shingles, trim and casing; the crown molding imagining itself to be better than the ordinary joist, the high-end cabinet believing itself superior to the simple wall studs from which it hangs — now all pitiful strangers; having forgotten the common tree from which they came.

He has recently released his first published book of poetry, Toward a Nation Not Yet Born, to his growing number of readers, and he will be reading his work at the Vandam Diner in Lower Manhattan on August 8. That is a homecoming of sorts for Lloyd, who grew up in a nonreligious family in the Lower East Side in the 1950s. He met the Unification Church in 1975 and attended one of the early training sessions at Barrytown, New York, before it became the venue for the Unification Theological Seminary. Lloyd attended the seminary soon after joining the church and graduated in 1978.

Toward a Nation Not Yet Born is 62 pages of aphoristic gems attributed to a fictional composite figure, dubbed “Hafiz,” who bears some resemblance to the historical Hafiz, that is, Shams-ud-din Muhammad, the renowned Persian poet of the late Middle Ages. Lloyd says that his fascination with the wisdom of the Holy Land was spurred by his participation in four trips to Israel sponsored by the Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI): “MEPI opened up a whole new world for me. After I got back from my first trip, I sought out mosques and synagogues on Long Island so I could get to know Palestinians and Israelis better,” he says. For several years he has participated in the Dialogue Project, a forum for Muslims, Jews, and Christians. The organizers of the Dialogue Project tell Lloyd that his views are valued as “intermediary.”

Cover notes for Toward a Nation Not Yet Born explain that “Hafiz is leaving this world as we know it, headed for a nation not yet born — a homeland different from any we’ve seen to date, yet one in which we all yearn to live.” Sufis, searchers, and Unificationists alike will feel comfortable in the world he invokes with verses like the following:

Hafiz Has No Passport

because he comes from a country not yet born: one that exists in womb of God, where people live for others, where hunger is a dinosaur, where poverty is not in the dictionary, where wardens are out of work and lawyers lament …

A strange place of right-side-up priorities: a place where people turn wrong inside-out, frowns into smiles, and water into wine.

Not a fairyland but a place called The Pure Land, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, Nirvana, Paradise, Cheon-il Guk — names don’t matter.

Think of Hafiz as a travel agent. Book a ticket in advance. He’s issuing entry visas and taking applications for citizenship from those who wish to leave this bankrupt world.

Toward A Nation Not Yet Born sells for $12.00, and can be ordered directly from Lloyd:

Contributed by Douglas Burton

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