Heart's Code
"Eugene Stevenson’s Heart’s Code is a work of true wonder. Ever since my introduction to his poetry, I have awaited his first collection and it is nothing short of magnificent. With deft precision and a keen eye, Stevenson captures 'the places of great joy [and] the places of great pain with a tender grace and moving beauty that will leave readers’ hearts aching for more.'" —Michelle Champagne, Susurrus, A Literary Arts Magazine of the American South
"Filled with snapshots of compassion, the poems in Heart's Code explore both the grand and pocket-sized experiences that drive us apart and bring us back together again, transformed into something greater than before." —Maxwell Bauman, Editor-in-Chief, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine
"Expansive and stirring, Heart’s Code carries us through complex landscapes of generational love and loss. A study in impermanence, anchored to nature’s juxtaposed cycles of rebirth, Stevenson’s verse offers redemption through the very journey itself. A poetic atlas of life’s gutting transience, not to be missed." —Kelly Easton, Editor, Compass Rose Literary Journal
"Eugene Stevenson’s debut collection of poetry ruminates on points of origin and journeys in sharply observed language. Simultaneously plain and artful, poem after poem draws us into dislocated people finding their way, following their own path, as a sensuous realism that conducts its own exploration, both familiar and unfamiliar, without constraining, as the 'world / recede[s] in the distance.' Heart’s Code is a meditation on a world balancing at the edge of its own disappearance." —Geoffrey Gatza, author of Disappointment Apples
The Population of Dreams
“Gene Stevenson is a visionary. He has an eye for small towns, lonely roads, the past, and the past in the present. When his poems talk to you, they haunt you.” —Dan Cuddy, editor, The Loch Raven Review
“Stevenson’s poems are as gritty as the places they ride us through: Over and through the mountains / miles and miles of emptiness to Eureka; from Santiago to the funeral mass for a mother who when she could no longer / repeat her children’s names in birth order … smiled; to Union Station, Chicago, where the sandwich is greasy and good; and his words catch us hard in a Pittsburgh picket line where we are instructed to Keep quiet. Keep your eyes straight ahead. These are poems for all of us who make plans to leave only to find that a move cannot take me from myself. Where I am is / where I have been, Stevenson’s poems keep our eyes straight ahead, watching for the next poem like a signpost.” —Dana Wildsmith, author, One Light
“Thoughtful, creative and descriptive; a lovely little collection of 'on the road' poetry.” —Robin Barratt, editor, THE POET Magazine.