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Philomath: Poems
Winner of the 2022 Levis Reading Prize
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's 2021 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
A Publishers Weekly “Top Ten Pick” for Fall 2021 Poetry Titles
A Library Journal “Poetry Title to Watch” for 2021
A Chicago Review of Books “Must-Read Book of September 2021” Selected by Sally Keith as a winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series, this debut collection is a ruminative catalogue of overgrowth and the places that haunt us. With Devon Walker-Figueroa as our Virgil, we begin in the collection’s eponymous town of Philomath, Oregon. We drift through the general store, into the Nazarene Church, past people plucking at the brambles of a place that won’t let them go. We move beyond the town into fields and farmland—and further still, along highways, into a cursed Californian town, a museum in Florence. We wander with a kind of animal logic, like a beast with “a mind to get loose / from a valley fallowing / towards foul,” through the tense, overlapping space between movement and stillness. An explorer at the edge of the sublime, Walker-Figueroa writes in quiet awe of nature, of memory, and of a beauty that is “merely existence carrying on and carrying on.” In her wanderings, she guides readers toward a kind of witness that doesn’t flinch from the bleak or bizarre: A vineyard engulfed in flames is reclaimed by the fields. A sow smothers its young, then bears more. A neighbor chews locusts in his yard. For in Philomath , it is the poet’s (sometimes reluctant) obligation “to keep an eye / on what is left” of the people and places that have impacted us. And there is always something left, whether it is the smell of burnt grapes, a twelfth-century bronze, or even a lock of hair.
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's 2021 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
A Publishers Weekly “Top Ten Pick” for Fall 2021 Poetry Titles
A Library Journal “Poetry Title to Watch” for 2021
A Chicago Review of Books “Must-Read Book of September 2021” Selected by Sally Keith as a winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series, this debut collection is a ruminative catalogue of overgrowth and the places that haunt us. With Devon Walker-Figueroa as our Virgil, we begin in the collection’s eponymous town of Philomath, Oregon. We drift through the general store, into the Nazarene Church, past people plucking at the brambles of a place that won’t let them go. We move beyond the town into fields and farmland—and further still, along highways, into a cursed Californian town, a museum in Florence. We wander with a kind of animal logic, like a beast with “a mind to get loose / from a valley fallowing / towards foul,” through the tense, overlapping space between movement and stillness. An explorer at the edge of the sublime, Walker-Figueroa writes in quiet awe of nature, of memory, and of a beauty that is “merely existence carrying on and carrying on.” In her wanderings, she guides readers toward a kind of witness that doesn’t flinch from the bleak or bizarre: A vineyard engulfed in flames is reclaimed by the fields. A sow smothers its young, then bears more. A neighbor chews locusts in his yard. For in Philomath , it is the poet’s (sometimes reluctant) obligation “to keep an eye / on what is left” of the people and places that have impacted us. And there is always something left, whether it is the smell of burnt grapes, a twelfth-century bronze, or even a lock of hair.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published September 14, 2021
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252 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
September 15, 2021
I’m impressed by this debut collection from Devon Walker-Figureroa. Philomath is poignantly autobiographical, tracing her early life in remote Kings Valley, Oregon. The poems capture the violence that lurks beneath the surface of rural life with hope and hopelessness precariously balanced. Several themes and motifs recur throughout the volume, giving this the coherence of a single work rather than a collection of individual pieces.
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February 10, 2022I will not rate this with stars because I think my dislike of poetry is the only thing that made me not like this book and that has nothing to do with poems themselves. I tried to have the most open mind possible going into it because I really did want to enjoy the collection, but unfortunately it did confirm my dislike of poetry. I just like... don't understand it and am kind of convinced I never will and I think I just have to be okay with that. I think the spacing and cadence of many of these poems are kinda funky and I don't think I ever really got used to that. Fun to hear about familiar places I grew up around and I did quite like the poem about community college. I liked many of her descriptions, but honestly I just didn't get much out of it. Would love to hear the opinion of someone that is more interested in poetry (@Helena)
October 6, 2021
Well, shit. This is just a very impressive debut. The poems are finely, finely wrought, balancing music and narrative deftly. The formal choices are playful in a very serious way--that is to say, the formal choices feel entirely thoroughly intentional while also experimental, pushing toward--something. There's a hunger in this book, though it is unstated, though it's just a feeling I have, for more poems,f or more examination of what a poem could be (though the author is enrolled in a fiction MFA so you know I could be wrong). Perhaps what I am feeling is just that these are the surface of a deep talent with more to say, the first water glinting; so much more to bubble up from the depths.
October 16, 2021
A rural coming of age turned poetic. Though quiet, the turbulence of these lines is felt like an ache.
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December 21, 2024Only actually finished one book in this poetry class, if you wanna know how my year was
October 23, 2022
Poetry is hard to rate. The poems are well written and really tell the story of the poet’s life and experiences. They definitely paint a picture.
But it’s a horribly sad picture, full of what reads to me as abuse and neglect - yet she lovingly thanks her family in the acknowledgements so it’s likely much more complicated.
It was impactful to read about places I know and recognize and can imagine the stories playing out. As well as the small town, forgotten logging towns filled with religion no one quite grasps and terrible things happen behind closed doors.
But it’s a horribly sad picture, full of what reads to me as abuse and neglect - yet she lovingly thanks her family in the acknowledgements so it’s likely much more complicated.
It was impactful to read about places I know and recognize and can imagine the stories playing out. As well as the small town, forgotten logging towns filled with religion no one quite grasps and terrible things happen behind closed doors.
December 15, 2024
One of the best poetry collections I’ve read this year
March 7, 2022
A rather startling debut book of poetry. The form and verse is so beautiful, that I'm looking forward to the next from Walker-Figueroa.
The poems themselves are at once ethereal, concrete, pragmatic, yet all the same grasping for something beyond.
The poems themselves are at once ethereal, concrete, pragmatic, yet all the same grasping for something beyond.
February 1, 2022
I'm so glad I read this gorgeous collection, filled with vivid images of rural Oregon life, unforgettable characters, coming-of-age narratives, grief, and forgiveness.
July 31, 2021
Loved this book. Devon really transports her reader to this other place and takes us on an intimate journey. Beautiful and heartbreaking
January 13, 2022
This book is a wonder—an incredible balance of impeccable imagery & exciting storytelling. This has set the bar so high for every other book I read this year.
May 21, 2025
There is mythology that is like embodied knowledge. That is like knowing when it’s the most emphasized part of a sentence, like in the sentence, “She was very knowing.” And this is Walker-Figueroa’s life in Philomath. An emphasis. A mythology. A knowing that is present in each of the circumstances and poetic turns. Philomath is the town the poet is from, where the “from” acts as a poetic form, or “from” is an active verb like they were dance instructions. I understand this might sound like exaggeration. And it is. But it’s hard to explain the elaborately involved situations Walker-Figueroa describes in the book. Imagine reading a myth describing a woman, and she was named Philomath. And her whole life, she was a ghost. And then she lay down in this part of the West, and now she’s the myth of a town and the town itself.
And maybe these descriptions feel outlandish. A dance. A town taking on the name of a ghost. But these are poems in the book! A dance about stillness. A town named after a man named Bodie, whose ghost almost seems to imprint its ghost-ness onto what is now a real ghost town. Think of Philomath as a prayer recited into a dark corner, or the shadows gathering in a friend’s basement while her friend’s brother is living there. Or that’s what the poems feel like. They dwell in this place carrying the dark knowledge a child would carry, and that the adult still carries, because all that darkness was true. The knowledge shared with friends. The roles taken in response to her family. In particular, how she knows her parents know her in a way that can make her feel foreign to herself, then she can also see it as a specifically fashioned parental love that is, as in the verb to be, existing. A familiarity that can be occupied. Perhaps not in an objective parental love way. Philomath is more knowing the consequences of this love. Especially how it’s suffocating the way you might imagine incubation is suffocating. And the challenge, then, of writing poems that are accurate to this life, while also aware the accuracy relies on a child’s perspective.
This is the material of Walker-Figueroa’s poetics of surge. Where understanding is conflated with what’s already understood. I would point to Jane Mead’s The Lord and the General Din of the World for similar modes. Walker-Figueroa even indicates working with her. Two other books that come to my mind are Judy Jordan’s Carolina Ghost Woods and Jane Springer’s Murder Ballad. Books that come out of the wilderness. That speak to women’s lives living in small towns. That articulate the onrush of a woman’s perspective among erratic men who want everyone to see a terrifying version of who they are. And for Walker-Figueroa, the poem isn’t about the man, but what it’s like when that kind of man exists in the midst of or in the margin of the poet’s life.
And maybe these descriptions feel outlandish. A dance. A town taking on the name of a ghost. But these are poems in the book! A dance about stillness. A town named after a man named Bodie, whose ghost almost seems to imprint its ghost-ness onto what is now a real ghost town. Think of Philomath as a prayer recited into a dark corner, or the shadows gathering in a friend’s basement while her friend’s brother is living there. Or that’s what the poems feel like. They dwell in this place carrying the dark knowledge a child would carry, and that the adult still carries, because all that darkness was true. The knowledge shared with friends. The roles taken in response to her family. In particular, how she knows her parents know her in a way that can make her feel foreign to herself, then she can also see it as a specifically fashioned parental love that is, as in the verb to be, existing. A familiarity that can be occupied. Perhaps not in an objective parental love way. Philomath is more knowing the consequences of this love. Especially how it’s suffocating the way you might imagine incubation is suffocating. And the challenge, then, of writing poems that are accurate to this life, while also aware the accuracy relies on a child’s perspective.
This is the material of Walker-Figueroa’s poetics of surge. Where understanding is conflated with what’s already understood. I would point to Jane Mead’s The Lord and the General Din of the World for similar modes. Walker-Figueroa even indicates working with her. Two other books that come to my mind are Judy Jordan’s Carolina Ghost Woods and Jane Springer’s Murder Ballad. Books that come out of the wilderness. That speak to women’s lives living in small towns. That articulate the onrush of a woman’s perspective among erratic men who want everyone to see a terrifying version of who they are. And for Walker-Figueroa, the poem isn’t about the man, but what it’s like when that kind of man exists in the midst of or in the margin of the poet’s life.
April 21, 2023
This is a very ambitious book of poems, one that sets out to explore the rural small town of the title as well as the writer's personal history, including her mother's death and her own departure from that town and her complicated feelings about it after leaving. Some of the poems are arranged in traditional forms, but others have longer, weirder shapes, and many of the poems are several pages long and interested in philosophical concerns that were a little beyond me. For me, as a reader, it became a little exhausting, but other readers might enjoy it more.
I did really like the first section, which is more of the development of the poet's small town upbringing-- I can't immediately think of another poet who is so interested in developing the setting for their narratives, but it's convincing and wondrous strange here.
The later stuff, which is when the formal play becomes pronounced, didn't work as well for me, when Walker-Figueroa's stand-in goes to college and ingests a lot of theory. I like theory and often I like theory in my poetry, but I think I wanted something different, for the theory to open the small town to new reflections, instead of what I got which felt like a layer of analysis on top of experience in ways I didn't quite no how to read.
This feels like the kind of book that wins awards, as this one did-- it's bold and has some big ideas. It just didn't quite work for me.
I did really like the first section, which is more of the development of the poet's small town upbringing-- I can't immediately think of another poet who is so interested in developing the setting for their narratives, but it's convincing and wondrous strange here.
The later stuff, which is when the formal play becomes pronounced, didn't work as well for me, when Walker-Figueroa's stand-in goes to college and ingests a lot of theory. I like theory and often I like theory in my poetry, but I think I wanted something different, for the theory to open the small town to new reflections, instead of what I got which felt like a layer of analysis on top of experience in ways I didn't quite no how to read.
This feels like the kind of book that wins awards, as this one did-- it's bold and has some big ideas. It just didn't quite work for me.
May 16, 2024
It can only be the end of the world, as you move forward. -Arthur Rimbaud
“Outside the house is the sound of becoming—the chirr of locusts, their low-lying electricity in the field, their inhuman him accelerating into a revision of silence. Inside, I write my name—the only one whose characters I know por corazón, and just by half, my last still incomprehensible—on the wall. All jagged and majuscule, all orange story-book shade of flame, inconstant color I learn with light pressure behind the crayon’s tip recalls my mother’s skin tone, with more force, belongs to the note E (according to the method I am learning), consonant thrum of a slight string I touch her piano’s hull, highest space of the treble’s F A C E I am wholly troubled as a I scrawl, in this new zone, perceiving I am me and all I take in exists merely as this me, though without requiring me, every you also a me, and this is so, and this is so because I am allowed, for this not loud second, to be my mother’s call for me when I slip out of view—string of letters permitted to mar her wall with my name.” (6 Permission to Mar)
“Outside the house is the sound of becoming—the chirr of locusts, their low-lying electricity in the field, their inhuman him accelerating into a revision of silence. Inside, I write my name—the only one whose characters I know por corazón, and just by half, my last still incomprehensible—on the wall. All jagged and majuscule, all orange story-book shade of flame, inconstant color I learn with light pressure behind the crayon’s tip recalls my mother’s skin tone, with more force, belongs to the note E (according to the method I am learning), consonant thrum of a slight string I touch her piano’s hull, highest space of the treble’s F A C E I am wholly troubled as a I scrawl, in this new zone, perceiving I am me and all I take in exists merely as this me, though without requiring me, every you also a me, and this is so, and this is so because I am allowed, for this not loud second, to be my mother’s call for me when I slip out of view—string of letters permitted to mar her wall with my name.” (6 Permission to Mar)
April 16, 2025
These poems are rich with sensory details of haunted towns, rotting houses, and the ghosts of girlhood. They tell vivid stories, set the scene with descriptions so solid it's like you're there, touching what the author's touching, seeing what she sees. There is something unsettling about many of these poems due in part to author's matter-of-fact way of relaying troubling information. She has a way of making ugly things beautiful.... or "pretty-ugly", I'd say.
Reminds me of Ethel Cain and Samia in terms of topic and writing style.
I go so back and forth on poems that play with form — I understand people who hate them and I also understand people who love them. Ultimately, I think the author's use of line breaks and non-typical formats requires you to slow down, to sulk in the writing — which is an experience cohesive with the book's subject matter. So in this case, I am PRO whacky form because it was done thoughtfully and masterfully. It's encouraged me to play with formatting in my poems!
Reminds me of Ethel Cain and Samia in terms of topic and writing style.
I go so back and forth on poems that play with form — I understand people who hate them and I also understand people who love them. Ultimately, I think the author's use of line breaks and non-typical formats requires you to slow down, to sulk in the writing — which is an experience cohesive with the book's subject matter. So in this case, I am PRO whacky form because it was done thoughtfully and masterfully. It's encouraged me to play with formatting in my poems!
April 13, 2024
After reading this book of poetry, I feel like I know the author now. Perhaps too much. It is so personal and private. I have to remind myself it could be fiction. Many of these are desolate and sad. I hope all these girls got out, but I fear some of them may not have. It's hard to say I liked these poems because they hurt me sometimes. But isn't that what poetry must do sometimes?
January 17, 2025
A brilliant first volume.
An assured debut. These astounding and often innovative poems paint a vivid and moving picture of the poet's early life and upbringing. No punches are spared.
An assured debut. These astounding and often innovative poems paint a vivid and moving picture of the poet's early life and upbringing. No punches are spared.
November 15, 2021
4.25 stars. I love Philomath. I like this poetry. It's different and something else.
February 7, 2022
Strong aesthetic and vibe though I found some difficulty in fully connecting with the cadence. Highlights include the poem about the ghost town and the one about the community college class.
February 7, 2022
Brilliant debut. Love her enjambment, internal rhymes, and alliteration. These are poems that reward and require rereading.
November 15, 2022
Absolutely yes
February 24, 2023
Beautiful, devastating, and life-giving.
------------------------
"...When Megan's dad learns
she's saved and he's not, he teaches her
a lesson about being
sorry and how God is not
watching Philomath. On Monday, Megan's eyes
can hardly open and our school
bans Liquid Paper and permanent
markers and the word
'bomb,' because they could cause us
to die before our time..."
"...My parents haven't known each other
in years and no one wants to know me either."
------------------------------
The poems open strong, then meander a bit, then pick back up. When she wants, Devon can punch you hard in the gut using only words. She points out some horrific realities of life in a small west coast town. The poems feel really lonely but also full of hope for some place better.
Sometimes I get frustrated by the long winded descriptions and think "maybe I don't like this" then I am pulled back in with a simple and devastating couple of stanzas. I feel like I get lost in all the unknowns then just at the moment I want to give up Devon pulls it all together and makes me understand why I had to go through the unknowing. Breathtaking, devastating, and frustrating. It's a lot like life.
My favorites are "Philomath" "After Birth" "Out of Body" "Curse of Bodie" and "Beginning Wax to Bronze at Chemeketa Community College".
------------------------
"...When Megan's dad learns
she's saved and he's not, he teaches her
a lesson about being
sorry and how God is not
watching Philomath. On Monday, Megan's eyes
can hardly open and our school
bans Liquid Paper and permanent
markers and the word
'bomb,' because they could cause us
to die before our time..."
"...My parents haven't known each other
in years and no one wants to know me either."
------------------------------
The poems open strong, then meander a bit, then pick back up. When she wants, Devon can punch you hard in the gut using only words. She points out some horrific realities of life in a small west coast town. The poems feel really lonely but also full of hope for some place better.
Sometimes I get frustrated by the long winded descriptions and think "maybe I don't like this" then I am pulled back in with a simple and devastating couple of stanzas. I feel like I get lost in all the unknowns then just at the moment I want to give up Devon pulls it all together and makes me understand why I had to go through the unknowing. Breathtaking, devastating, and frustrating. It's a lot like life.
My favorites are "Philomath" "After Birth" "Out of Body" "Curse of Bodie" and "Beginning Wax to Bronze at Chemeketa Community College".
March 11, 2024
super lyrical and wonderful
October 28, 2024
i lovvved this collection, especially how she plays with form & biblical themes!!
February 26, 2025
Not my cup of tea
December 3, 2025
I enjoy Philomath by Devon Walker-Figueroa because of the way it handles subject matter. Well handling a broader number of subjects each poem seemed to stumble its way into one place, how the “mundane” parts of childhood can affect our larger being. For one thing, many of the poems made religion in a casual way that hinted at a bigger picture, namely a deeper rooted religious guilt. In “Golden”, Walker-Figueroa talks about religion in a familiarized way referencing “a phone book thick as Exodus” and heaven as “just a ghost town that never ends”. I was shocked by the way the author matter-of-factly mentioned religion as just a part of their life, especially because of the ghost town comment because it seemed clear to me that there was a larger impact to the point where they didn’t have to consciously think about it. Matter-of-factness was a pretty prominent tone throughout their poem, often in relation to the actions of their father. In the poem “Out of Body”, Walker-Figueroa talks about their father burning her things “(he) poured the fuel over the heap of my mother’s possessions”. Instead of taking a particular stance over whether or not she believes her father has the right to be burning her mothers things she focuses on the visuals of her mothers burning chair. The tone overall was extremely interesting, it wasn’t reminiscent in the way I would normally associate with memory, I would normally expect a rose colored hue over the world or a sort of sour layer over it all, it was almost flat and neutral, looking at what could be skewed through time like it was fact rather than reminiscence. Overall, I thought Philomath by Devon Walker-Figueroa was an extremely interesting book of poems that uniquely utilized tone and subject matter to capture the reader's attention.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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