From National Poetry Series Competition winner Stephanie Horvath, a haunting, dreamlike odyssey through the landscapes and ethos of America
In Field of Vision, we travel the landscape of human emotion—and the American landscape becomes emotion, as through deserts, forests, rivers, and coasts the speaker explores the intricacies of her experiences and interactions with nature. She raises her newborn son in a trailer in rural Vermont; in a desert she thinks of the life she left behind in Ohio; she moves to an island in Maine to work at an old motel with a lover. These moments capture, viscerally and intimately, the sense of the gothic in rural America—dark, damp dirt on one’s hands, a river that wends its way through fog, the decay of wet leaves on a forest floor, a desert over which vultures circle—moments of birth and life and death. Field of Vision captures the ancient history that weaves into each of our individual histories—of the earth, the animals, the fossils, the moments that comprise us all.
“Field of Vision is an exquisite, strange contemplation of contrasts that feel both universal and deeply American: the Arizona desert, drenched Maine shores; tenderness and violence; dreams and the dreamlike twists of real life. These poems twist perceptions, drawing us in, lulling us in order to surprise us. They remind me that poetry can be an act of rescue, reviving not only language but also the reader.” —Elisa Gonzalez, author of Grand Tour
Stephanie Horvath’s poems have appeared in Bennington Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, and Denver Quarterly, among other journals. She completed her PhD at the University of Southern California and her MFA at Indiana University. She lives in Northern California and is currently a 2024–26 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
View titles by Stephanie Horvath
From National Poetry Series Competition winner Stephanie Horvath, a haunting, dreamlike odyssey through the landscapes and ethos of America
In Field of Vision, we travel the landscape of human emotion—and the American landscape becomes emotion, as through deserts, forests, rivers, and coasts the speaker explores the intricacies of her experiences and interactions with nature. She raises her newborn son in a trailer in rural Vermont; in a desert she thinks of the life she left behind in Ohio; she moves to an island in Maine to work at an old motel with a lover. These moments capture, viscerally and intimately, the sense of the gothic in rural America—dark, damp dirt on one’s hands, a river that wends its way through fog, the decay of wet leaves on a forest floor, a desert over which vultures circle—moments of birth and life and death. Field of Vision captures the ancient history that weaves into each of our individual histories—of the earth, the animals, the fossils, the moments that comprise us all.
Praise
“Field of Vision is an exquisite, strange contemplation of contrasts that feel both universal and deeply American: the Arizona desert, drenched Maine shores; tenderness and violence; dreams and the dreamlike twists of real life. These poems twist perceptions, drawing us in, lulling us in order to surprise us. They remind me that poetry can be an act of rescue, reviving not only language but also the reader.” —Elisa Gonzalez, author of Grand Tour
Author
Stephanie Horvath’s poems have appeared in Bennington Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, and Denver Quarterly, among other journals. She completed her PhD at the University of Southern California and her MFA at Indiana University. She lives in Northern California and is currently a 2024–26 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
View titles by Stephanie Horvath
