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The Deepest Breath
Steve Straight
*The Deepest Breath* is a collection by Steve Straight, a Connecticut poet who directs the poetry program at Manchester Community College and has long been a fixture of the state's literary life. Straight writes the kind of accessible, observant free verse that rewards reading aloud — poems rooted in everyday encounters, work, family, and the natural world, alert to both humor and wonder. He is a practiced performer of his own work, and these poems carry that spoken warmth onto the page. Admirers of his other collections, *The Water Carrier* and *The Almanac*, will recognize the same generous, plainspoken voice here. For readers who like poetry that is unpretentious without being slight — poetry that pays close attention and invites you to do the same — it is welcoming company.
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The author
Steve Straight is a professor of English and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College in Connecticut, and a widely traveled reader of his own work. His collection The Water Carrier was published by Curbstone Press in 2002, followed by The Almanac in 2012, and in 2023 he received the William Meredith Award in Poetry — a body of recognition that marks him as a durable presence in New England poetry.
The book
The Deepest Breath gathers Straight's characteristically clear, grounded poems. He favors the material of ordinary life — a job, a family memory, a walk outdoors — and finds in it moments of surprise and feeling, written in a conversational free verse built for the ear as much as the eye.
How it reads
The poems are immediately approachable, which is not the same as simple; their plainness is a craft. Read aloud, they open up, rewarding the reader who slows down. It is a good collection for someone who thinks they don't like contemporary poetry.
For more context
Readers who take to Straight's voice can go on to The Water Carrier and The Almanac, and to the wider circle of accessible New England poets he reads and teaches alongside.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Steve Straight
- ISBN
- None
- Format
- Paperback
- Shelf
- Poetry
- Location
- Maine