Howell

Poetry. African American Studies. "I began writing HOWELL about fifteen years ago in the wake of the Oklahoma bombing and subsequent trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (Michael Fortier was given partial immunity in exchange for his testimony against McVeigh). The title refers to some newspaper accounts of the itinerary of McVeigh in Michigan when he visited and stayed at the Nichols brothers' home 'near Howell, Michigan.' The location of the Nichols house, near Troy, Michigan, is actually nowhere 'near' Howell, and this 'error' is the catalyst for the poem, itself a kind of 'writing through' the history of Howell, Michigan (there are, at last count, at least four different histories of Howell online, and these constitute the major divisions of the poem), as well as the birthplaces, towns and regions of Nichols and Fortier."—Tyrone Williams