Any book praised by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander is likely to be two things: fine tuned and formal. Philip Stephens' The Determined Days is both.

By "formal," I mean that Stephens' verse takes shape in specific and rule-bound ways, not that it is fussy or fancy. I'm not sure I can think of a less-fancy poet, nor less-fancy material. The Determined Days is dark and gritty and real.

That this is not your average "decanting of personality" poetry volume is evident in the first poem's first lines:

Ditch Digging

We - Hondo, Hawk, Smith, Sandoval and Rome -
Stab with our picks and shovels at the loam,
The sand, black stones the size of hearts, then clay.
Layer by stubborn layer, we make our way
Half of a grave's depth down into the earth.
We sculpt a narrow ditch, for what it's worth,
And then we lay pipe, glue it, backfill in.
Next day, where that pipe stops, we start again.

The first time I read it, I was skeptical. "Good Lord," I thought. "Metered verse about manual labor. You've got to be kidding me."

But the verse is technically gorgeous — four beats per line, rhymes that don't startle the ear or eye. Soon it became transparent, a vehicle for the story it contains. The voice of the digger rings clear:

Spare me those fanfares for the common grunts.
Ditch digging's just the shit work no one wants.
It isn't science, and it isn't art.
Quite senselessly, we pick some earth apart
And put it back, almost like before.
Nothing changes. Nothing. Nothing more
Except when day ends, Rome might tell a joke,
And we'll drink coffee, chew, or have a smoke,
Turning our backs on the little sinking scar
Of broken dirt that leads to where we are.

With the last two lines I was officially hooked. Drawn-in. Disbelief suspended. Wanting more.

The book's first poem gives the reader a taste of the attitude and intensity which follow. But only the book's first and last poems rhyme and follow this strict kind of meter; they act as book ends for the poems in-between.

Stephens works in ordinary words. He succeeds in elevating experience into poetry not because of any inherent loftiness of language but because of his skill in using small brushstrokes to draw authentic pictures.

In "March," the reader overhears a conversation between two homeless men playing a game of chess behind a stack of unemployment papers at a library. The way Stephens strings together description and dialogue puts me in mind of Frost: I am reminded of "Death of a Hired Man," of "Home Burial."

I love the way "March" begins:

Behind a rack piled high with pastel tax forms,
Two men shed gloves, soiled coats, and the frayed mail
Of cardigans they'd scrounged for, then sat down.

Frayed mail of cardigans they'd scrounged for: that's one of those lines I wish like hell I'd thought of.