Animal Psalm

Description

Animal Psalm

poems by DeAnna Stephens

ISBN: 978-1-963695-65-6 paperback $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-66-3 ebook $9.99
August 18, 2026

WINNER OF THE 2024 ARTHUR SMITH POETRY PRIZE

In this collection, love reveals itself at the thresholds of forests, at the frayed edges of language and heritage, reminding readers that the backbone of love is the assurance of the senses—current of creek, texture of quartz, flavors of late summer—the ever-presence of the natural world. In their exploration of the complexity of familial and romantic bonds and cultural identity, these poems reveal the significance of myth in articulating loss and longing.

Praise for Animal Psalm: poems by DeAnna Stephens

In the poems of Animal Psalm, I am struck by the intimacy with both the natural world and the bonds of family, family secrets, memories of youthful romance, sex, intense sensuousness, and ache of love. Who can forget high-tension lines such as: “Hearts became windows lovers broke for exit.”

—Robert Morgan, author of Dark Energy

A central question of this ambitious poetry seems to be “How many eons can a body hold?” Indeed, one of the volume’s pleasures lies in never knowing just where, or to whom, these lovely poems will lead us. Within their brief, seemingly ephemeral confines, Stephens’ vibrant language sparks semantically across time and vast distances. And in that voice her dense domestic tableaus brim with mystery—multi-layered, multi-faceted, multi-tonal, their “hues,” as she says, that of “indistinct heritage.” If you love the music, energy, and surprise inherent in our language, you will appreciate this fine book.

—Mark Cox, author of Knowing

DeAnna Stephens’ work has appeared in Cherry Tree, Pedestal Magazine, Feminist Studies, and other journals. In 2024, her poetry was a semifinalist for the Scotti Merrill Award for Poetry, and in 2023, her work won the George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry. She was the 2019 recipient of the Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Contest. Her poetry has received two Pushcart Prize nominations, and in 2022, she was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame. She is the author of Heliotaxis from Main Street Rag. Stephens resides on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau where she teaches writing at Roane State Community College.