Hello, Stephen

By: Stephen Roger Powers

€12.00

After following all roads to Dollywood in The Follower’s Tale, Stephen Roger Powers now brings the fairy songmother of the Smoky Mountains to a wider world in Hello, Stephen. With poems about tattoos and paint, islands and lakes, secrets and starlight, in a voice that turns from whimsical to melancholy, this second collection of lyric and narrative poetry transports the magic of Dolly Parton to Hawaii, India, and other sur...

ISBN	978-1-908836-66-3
Pub Date	Thursday, February 27, 2014
Cover Image	“Abandoned” by David Dunn
Page Count	76
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After following all roads to Dollywood in The Follower’s Tale, Stephen Roger Powers now brings the fairy songmother of the Smoky Mountains to a wider world in Hello, Stephen. With poems about tattoos and paint, islands and lakes, secrets and starlight, in a voice that turns from whimsical to melancholy, this second collection of lyric and narrative poetry transports the magic of Dolly Parton to Hawaii, India, and other surprising destinations.

Brooding, funny, sensuous, textured, drunk on language––these poems, this book, is a wonder of precision, of a passionate involvement with the world and many of its (shall we say “unique”) humans.

Thomas Lux

Hello, Stephen is full of hot Georgia nights, wonderment in India, and tattoos––both real and emotional––that have been stitched onto skin. These pages illuminate the imperfections of our fragile bodies and remind us that we’re always swollen with love, loss, and lust. Here is a poet who is funny and wise, often at the same time. Through his clear-eyed honesty, we roller-coaster deep into the hidden chambers of the human heart. And best of all? His language burns with the same joy and heat of a firework sizzling up from Dollywood.

Patrick Hicks

author of The Commandant of Lubizec and This London

“Every story we’ve made,” states Stephen Roger Powers in Hello, Stephen, his newest book of poetry, “survives this broken life, / deep- rooted in grace of their own.” With keen empathy for the human condition, the poems in this extraordinary collection are rich with imagery––as in “three butterflies, each / the monarch of its own campanile”––and range from the witty to the deeply moving, from the erotic to the charmingly devious. Equally evident here is Powers’ complex relationship with his Constant Muse, Dolly Parton, who haunts many of these poems like a sultry apparition, and to whom we’d be wise to pay attention. Hello, Stephen, indeed.

Marilyn L.Taylor - Wisconsin Poet Laureate, 2009-2010

Stephen Roger Powers

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Stephen Roger Powers has coped with profound hearing loss most of his life. He was a delivery driver and a stand-up comedian while working on his PhD in English, and he has lost count of how many times he has seen Dolly Parton at Dollywood and in concert. Powers has published three other poetry collections with Salmon Poetry, and his collection of short stories, Highway Speed, was published by Closet Skeleton Press. His writing has appeared in over 100 journals and anthologies, including 32 Poems, The Comstock Review, Copper Nickel, Natural Bridge, Shenandoah, and Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology.

www.stephenrogerpowers.com

Review by Sandra Cohen Margulius from the Museum of Americana: A Literary Review

Stephen Roger Powers, a poet/writer hailing from the state of Wisconsin, began his first full length book, The Follower’s Tale, while still working on his PhD. Often his poems become a collection of bluegrass inspired lyric and narrative poems centered on his muse, the singer/actress, Dolly Parton. Powers’ newest collection of poetry, which is set to be published in the summer of 2014 by Salmon Poetry, is called Hello, Stephen, and continues this journey down the road to Dollywood, again using Parton as his muse. With poems that weave Dolly into and out of the speaker’s life and adventures, Hello, Stephen, constantly surprises the reader with its sense of humor, colorful detailed imagery, pop-culture references, and impressive narrative storytelling. It is a body of work that provides something for every poetry reader from novice to the well-read.

Hello, Stephen / Stephen Roger Powers

Hello, Stephen

By: Stephen Roger Powers

Other Titles from Stephen Roger Powers

All Seats Fifty Cents

Hail My Attention Kindly

The Follower's Tale

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