Determined Days: Poems

The sights and sounds and smells of day in and day out, of back and forth to the field, the tracks, the work site, of twilight and the inevitable next morning, of days lived in weary anticipation of the same: these are the themes, motifs, and rhythms Philip Stephens captures in The Determined Days, a remarkable debut collection that illuminates the lives of working men and women inhabiting distinctively American settings. Stephens' natural voice and cadences transport us to far-ranging urban and rural locales in the Midwest, the Ozarks, and northern California. Against often bleak landscapes, his poems introduce us to a host of memorable characters: a former gravedigger who believes ghosts stole his first-born; a young couple forced to stay the night at a motel run by a pornography-watching desk clerk; a woman haunted by a headless deer; a gang of railroad signalmen who get through their exhausting workdays by telling stories, arguing, and vying for what power they can gain in an indifferent world.

Throughout this volume of plainspoken narratives, Stephens captures the outer ruggedness and searching inner spirit of hardened but vulnerable men and women who tell tales tall and short, often reordering chaos and disappointment. Ironic, sometimes tragic, always provocative, The Determined Days is a startling poetic consideration of labor, life, and relationships that raises our hopes for contemporary American poetry.