How Men Pray

by Philip F. Deaver

Poetry. Prize-winning fiction author Philip Deaver's poetry is praised as "snapshots of the legendary America of promise and disappointment. They are the poems of an equilibrist, a storyteller whose sense of poetry is a mixture of colloquial address, irony, and tenderness toward our losses and our loneliness" - Carol Frost.

Genres: Poetry

102 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2005

About the author

Philip F. Deaver is an American writer and poet from Tuscola, Illinois. His work has appeared in literary magazines, including The New England Review, the Kenyon Review, Frostproof Review, the Florida Review, Poetry Miscellany and The Reaper.

He is a professor of English and permanent writer-in-residence at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. He also lectures at Spalding University's limited residency Master of Fine Arts program.
Deaver was born in Chicago, and grew up in Tuscola, Illinois. Following high school, Deaver attended St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana, where he majored in English literature. Deaver married in 1968, and taught in 1968-69 at St. Francis High School, Wheaton, Illinois. In the summer of 1969, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Frankfurt, Germany.

Following military service, Deaver worked in a Model Cities program in Indianapolis. He received consecutive Charles Stewart Mott Fellowships, resulting in a Masters Degree in Education at Ball State University and a Doctorate from the University of Virginia.

In 1986 he received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction for his story collection Silent Retreats (University of Georgia Press, 1988). In 1988 his story Arcola Girls appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards.

In 1995 his short story, Forty Martyrs, was cited in Best American Short Stories. Later that year his short story The Underlife was cited in the Pushcart Prize XX.

In May, 2005 his collection of poems, How Men Pray, was published. In August of that year two poems—The Worrier's Guild and Flying—were selected by Garrison Keillor for The Writer's Almanac. In the summer of 2006, Deaver's story Lowell and the Rolling Thunder appeared in the Kenyon Review with an interview with the author posted on their website at kenyonreview.com.

Reviews

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because I had read The Worriers’ Guild online and loved it. My favorites are Dawning, The Hawk, Michael at 12, The Lightning, With You, Time, The Night Light in the New Life, and Skydiving. And of course The Worriers’ Guild.

I want to sit down with Philip and talk with him. I want to better understand about his parents. I want to understand the poems Me in Roy’s Old Office, Diary of a Dead People Pleaser, Althea, and The End of the Father. I will read this book again some day.

[lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

phil read "doppler" at a faculty reading at spalding, and it broke my heart. one of my favorite teachers.

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very moving collection.

A few poems in this book have been featured on NPR's "The Writer's Almanac." You can get to them from here: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org...