What do you think?
Rate this book
The Determined Days: Poems
This debut collection of poems spans the country presenting depressing landscapes and a memorable cast of characters, including an exgravedigger who believes in gouls and a pornobsessed hotel desk clerk.
- GenresPoetry
126 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Read
January 11, 2012Commerce most visibly meets literature in Nashville during October’s annual Southern Festival of Books, but just down the road, the 12-year-old Sewanee Writers’ Conference continues to burgeon in several directions—most recently north-northeast toward the world of New York publishing. Under an agreement with Peter Mayer’s The Overlook Press—best known recently for its reprints of Southern writer Charles Portis—the conference’s director, Wyatt Prunty, recently initiated a new imprint: the Sewanee Writers’ Series, which issues several books of poetry, fiction, and drama each year.
Prunty, the author of seven books of poetry and one volume of literary criticism, currently serves as Carlton Professor of English at the university. He also directs the school’s undergraduate writing program, oversees the resident writers program (which has brought Manette Ansay, Tony Earley, and others to campus during the academic year), and keeps an eye on the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference. After a substantive term as poetry editor for the SEWANEE THEOLOGICAL REVIEW, Prunty has turned that position over to Daniel Anderson, a former student of Prunty’s at Johns Hopkins and himself a poet.
The soft-spoken, even-tempered Prunty could hardly be more different than the Southern author whose financial bequest has made this mini-empire possible: Tennessee Williams. Hyperbolic, multi-addicted, charmingly voluble, and determinedly gay, the playwright was the grandson of an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Walter E. Dakin, who studied theology at Sewanee in 1895. To honor his grandfather, Williams left a residual portion of his estate to Sewanee, where he asked that a memorial fund be established to encourage “creative writers and creative writing.” Part of that fund continued to support Williams’ sister, Rose—upon whom he based the character of Laura in THE GLASS MENAGERIE—until her death, which occurred in one of the mental institutions in which she spent her life. (She’d been lobotomized as an adolescent, a not infrequent “cure” for revved-up female hormones at the time.) With Rose’s passing, the full estate came to Sewanee.
This fund, named for Dakin, underwrites The Overlook Press/Sewanee Writers’ Series, whose inaugural volume in September 1998, JUST LET ME SAY THIS ABOUT THAT, consisted of a long poem by John Bricuth, the alter ego of John Irwin, humanities professor at Johns Hopkins (and, in his capacity as director of its poetry series, Prunty’s editor). Fiction and drama have followed over the last two years, along with publication announcements for poetry books by two more of Prunty’s former Hopkins students: Philip Stephens and Nashvillian Greg Williamson.
If all this seems as incestuous as the relationships between certain Williams characters, readers should know that the nearly insurmountable odds of publishing a book of poems—only marginally better than the odds of being in a plane crash—make the championing of one’s students seem like a moral responsibility to many teachers. For example, the former head of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jorie Graham, routinely judges book competitions and series with “open” submission guidelines much like Sewanee’s and selects her former students as winners. Poet and literary critic William Logan, on the other hand, has long objected to this practice—and the rationale behind it—as gussied-up nepotism.
In Prunty’s defense, it should be noted that he’s hardly rewarding the undeserving: Williamson, a dazzling talent who studied with Mark Jarman during his undergrad days at Vanderbilt, has won the prestigious Whiting Award, and his first volume, THE SILENT PARTNER, was a prize-winner as well. Nonetheless, the appearance of favoritism—whether or not there’s actually fire behind the smoke—tends to lessen these young poets’ genuine accomplishments, as well as tarnishing whatever prestige the Sewanee Writers’ Series in poetry attempts to establish.
There’s an even more vexing problem that any editor/publisher must face: While they have the unquestionable right to further their own aesthetic via the books they issue, the result can be an eventually deadening similarity. Scanning the reviews of Sewanee Writers’ Series poets’ work, it’s impossible not to notice the recurrence of adjectives like “ruminative,” “modest,” “ironic,” “reticent,” “distant,” and “philosophical.” Such adjectives rightly imply that these poems rely on metaphysical wit and plaintiveness as the basis for emotional impact. Consequently, it seems important to say that Philip Stephens, the author of the series’ second poetry release, THE DETERMINED DAYS, is at his best when he breaks that tone with fury and out-and-out sorrow. In fact, Stephens’ very good first book derives its considerable impact from allowing two seemingly antithetical forces to collide: an elegant neo-formalist aesthetic and “determinedly” working-class subject matter.
Relying on their former teacher as editor and publisher won’t necessarily prevent Prunty’s protégés—who, like him, are very smart and very skilled—from developing into noisier, messier, and more extravagant poets with voices of their own. Taking a cue from Tennessee Williams himself might be a start. After all, for a publishing venue established with the playwright’s money, Sewanee’s current poetry list and aesthetic offer no real perch for a writer such as “Bird,” as Williams was called by intimates. The playwright’s highly figured, grandly rhetorical, and profoundly “feminine” style was partly rooted in his own work as a poet, partly in his profound connection with his sister and other casualties of the cult of the Southern belle, and partly in his status as a sexual outlaw. These last two connections make Williams the closest thing to...well, not our region’s greatest female poet, exactly, but its greatest and most profound lyricist of Southern womanhood, especially in its transgressive and non-gender-specific forms.
The other cornerstone of Williams’ achievement, of course, was his sheer linguistic genius, which drew heavily upon everyday Southern hyperbole: Recognizing the potential that lay in our highly figurative, unabashedly humid idiom, Williams plucked and/or crafted phrases—“like a cat on a hot tin roof”—that remain the closest to Shakespeare that Dixie has yet offered. When the playwright’s instincts went awry, his verbal excess could degenerate into drawling camp. Nonetheless, his continuous assault on the accepted boundaries of life and language shows clearly the appetite for risk that great art never lacks; and it would be energizing, at the least, to see more of his daring, compassionate sensibility reflected in the Sewanee’s Writers’ Series’ upcoming titles.
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE)
Prunty, the author of seven books of poetry and one volume of literary criticism, currently serves as Carlton Professor of English at the university. He also directs the school’s undergraduate writing program, oversees the resident writers program (which has brought Manette Ansay, Tony Earley, and others to campus during the academic year), and keeps an eye on the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference. After a substantive term as poetry editor for the SEWANEE THEOLOGICAL REVIEW, Prunty has turned that position over to Daniel Anderson, a former student of Prunty’s at Johns Hopkins and himself a poet.
The soft-spoken, even-tempered Prunty could hardly be more different than the Southern author whose financial bequest has made this mini-empire possible: Tennessee Williams. Hyperbolic, multi-addicted, charmingly voluble, and determinedly gay, the playwright was the grandson of an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Walter E. Dakin, who studied theology at Sewanee in 1895. To honor his grandfather, Williams left a residual portion of his estate to Sewanee, where he asked that a memorial fund be established to encourage “creative writers and creative writing.” Part of that fund continued to support Williams’ sister, Rose—upon whom he based the character of Laura in THE GLASS MENAGERIE—until her death, which occurred in one of the mental institutions in which she spent her life. (She’d been lobotomized as an adolescent, a not infrequent “cure” for revved-up female hormones at the time.) With Rose’s passing, the full estate came to Sewanee.
This fund, named for Dakin, underwrites The Overlook Press/Sewanee Writers’ Series, whose inaugural volume in September 1998, JUST LET ME SAY THIS ABOUT THAT, consisted of a long poem by John Bricuth, the alter ego of John Irwin, humanities professor at Johns Hopkins (and, in his capacity as director of its poetry series, Prunty’s editor). Fiction and drama have followed over the last two years, along with publication announcements for poetry books by two more of Prunty’s former Hopkins students: Philip Stephens and Nashvillian Greg Williamson.
If all this seems as incestuous as the relationships between certain Williams characters, readers should know that the nearly insurmountable odds of publishing a book of poems—only marginally better than the odds of being in a plane crash—make the championing of one’s students seem like a moral responsibility to many teachers. For example, the former head of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jorie Graham, routinely judges book competitions and series with “open” submission guidelines much like Sewanee’s and selects her former students as winners. Poet and literary critic William Logan, on the other hand, has long objected to this practice—and the rationale behind it—as gussied-up nepotism.
In Prunty’s defense, it should be noted that he’s hardly rewarding the undeserving: Williamson, a dazzling talent who studied with Mark Jarman during his undergrad days at Vanderbilt, has won the prestigious Whiting Award, and his first volume, THE SILENT PARTNER, was a prize-winner as well. Nonetheless, the appearance of favoritism—whether or not there’s actually fire behind the smoke—tends to lessen these young poets’ genuine accomplishments, as well as tarnishing whatever prestige the Sewanee Writers’ Series in poetry attempts to establish.
There’s an even more vexing problem that any editor/publisher must face: While they have the unquestionable right to further their own aesthetic via the books they issue, the result can be an eventually deadening similarity. Scanning the reviews of Sewanee Writers’ Series poets’ work, it’s impossible not to notice the recurrence of adjectives like “ruminative,” “modest,” “ironic,” “reticent,” “distant,” and “philosophical.” Such adjectives rightly imply that these poems rely on metaphysical wit and plaintiveness as the basis for emotional impact. Consequently, it seems important to say that Philip Stephens, the author of the series’ second poetry release, THE DETERMINED DAYS, is at his best when he breaks that tone with fury and out-and-out sorrow. In fact, Stephens’ very good first book derives its considerable impact from allowing two seemingly antithetical forces to collide: an elegant neo-formalist aesthetic and “determinedly” working-class subject matter.
Relying on their former teacher as editor and publisher won’t necessarily prevent Prunty’s protégés—who, like him, are very smart and very skilled—from developing into noisier, messier, and more extravagant poets with voices of their own. Taking a cue from Tennessee Williams himself might be a start. After all, for a publishing venue established with the playwright’s money, Sewanee’s current poetry list and aesthetic offer no real perch for a writer such as “Bird,” as Williams was called by intimates. The playwright’s highly figured, grandly rhetorical, and profoundly “feminine” style was partly rooted in his own work as a poet, partly in his profound connection with his sister and other casualties of the cult of the Southern belle, and partly in his status as a sexual outlaw. These last two connections make Williams the closest thing to...well, not our region’s greatest female poet, exactly, but its greatest and most profound lyricist of Southern womanhood, especially in its transgressive and non-gender-specific forms.
The other cornerstone of Williams’ achievement, of course, was his sheer linguistic genius, which drew heavily upon everyday Southern hyperbole: Recognizing the potential that lay in our highly figurative, unabashedly humid idiom, Williams plucked and/or crafted phrases—“like a cat on a hot tin roof”—that remain the closest to Shakespeare that Dixie has yet offered. When the playwright’s instincts went awry, his verbal excess could degenerate into drawling camp. Nonetheless, his continuous assault on the accepted boundaries of life and language shows clearly the appetite for risk that great art never lacks; and it would be energizing, at the least, to see more of his daring, compassionate sensibility reflected in the Sewanee’s Writers’ Series’ upcoming titles.
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE)
December 31, 2018
hit me with feelings
April 4, 2009
Having read Philip Stephens' chapbook, THE SIGNALMEN, I pretty much knew what to expect from this book (which includes some poems from the chapbook), and the poet delivers: in poem after poem, Stephens presents a careful balance of everyday concerns, working-class speech, and formal precision. The "low" references that we so often turn to in on-the-job banter feel particularly authentic (and remind me of similar work crew "trash talk" from past jobs at which I've labored) and are part of what makes these poems work: rather than glorifying the "common man" and his labor, Stephens acts as a nearly-invisible witness, providing what feels like first-hand immediacy to an unfiltered setting. Nice formal touches here, and the inclusion of dialogue feels right on the mark, never inauthentic. One of the best books I've read in this genre.
August 7, 2007
Formal without being fussy or formulaic, this book is a masterpiece. The poems are nuanced, not predictable; the narratives and dialogue are seamless.
I also am in awe of the trajectory of The Determined Days, starting out literally with "Ditch-Digging" and ending with "Climbing."
Read this book: It's Robert Frost with grit under his fingernails.
I also am in awe of the trajectory of The Determined Days, starting out literally with "Ditch-Digging" and ending with "Climbing."
Read this book: It's Robert Frost with grit under his fingernails.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews