In the tradition of Winesburg, Ohio and other American spirit-of-place collections, the poems in The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks center in a small, industrial community in New York State's Mohawk Valley. According to Joshua Mays, "Stephen Haven proves that working-class literature may exist independently from the work place... Haven concentrates on the personal moments, the private thoughts, and situations working-class people find themselves in outside of the factory or workplace. The result is a rich portrait of the American soul.... Haven's descriptions infuse each piece with an ordinary beauty that seems deeply symbolic.... This collection is elegant, thoughtful, and above all, beautifully involved in the lives and substance of the characters."
This second edition of The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks adds six new poems to Haven's first book about the town that shaped him. Haven went on to publish three additional collections of poetry, Dust and Bread, The Last Sacred Place in North America, and The Flight from Meaning, as well as one book-length memoir, The River Lock: One Boy's Life Along the Mohawk.
"Stephen Haven understands the sawdust-in-the-pores desolation of old mill towns with their poisoned rivers: places where "the sky is an indigenous gray," and salvation must be imagined from the gift of what-is. Most remarkably, he infuses this "lost architecture" with a terrifying elegance. Haven's vision gives sustenance because we recognize its accuracy and take comfort in a grace as unsparing as it is profound. There is nothing facile here, no easy epiphanies, just the steadfast gaze of a poet who deeply understands the American psyche in its past and present guises, a history peopled by deviant Puritans, vandals, and outcasts, the power of a place we can leave that will never leave us. Ablaze with intelligence and a fierce musicality, his poems are indelible."
-Alice Fulton, winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and author of Felt, winner of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress
"In this remarkable collection of poems, Stephen Haven beautifully encapsulates the duality of America--its beauty intertwined with a profound sense of loneliness and loss. These verses transport us to a time when working-class life flourished in post-war America, inviting reflection on a past filled with prosperity and decline. Through his sensitive portrayals, Stephen gives voice to those of us rooted in the working class in the Midwest, rural upstate New York, and across the country.
Haven's articulate metaphors evoke deep emotions, capturing the essence of life before and after our national industrial decline. This collection serves as a poignant meditation on what once was--a world that can never be reclaimed, where corporate abandonment left workers in the abyss.
The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks brims with contemplative poems that demand to be felt and remembered. From the once-thriving Mohawk Valley to the early days of the first East Coast Puritans, culminating in reflections on the significance of it all. This is a collection to savor and cherish. It serves as a powerful reminder of our shared heritage."
-M.L. Liebler, Author of Hound Dog: A Poet's Memoir of Rock, Revolution and Redemption (Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin).
Haven, Stephen: -
Stephen Haven's fourth collection of poems, The Flight from Meaning, was published by Slant in 2025. The flight from Meaning was a finalist (in earlier form) for the International Beverly Prize for Literature. He has three earlier poetry collections, The Last Sacred Place in North America, selected by T.R. Hummer as winner of the New American Poetry Prize; Dust and Bread, winner of the Ohio Poet of the Year award; and The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks, runner-up for the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry in a year Levine served as judge. Together with Wang Shouyi, Li Yongyi, and Jin Zhong, in 2021 he published the 300-page, dual language (Mandarin and English) anthology of collaborative translations, Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields: Poems from Contemporary China (Twelve Winters Press). His memoir, The River Lock: One Boy's Life Along the Mohawk, was published by Syracuse University Press in 2008.
Haven's Ph.D. is from NYU, where he wrote his dissertation under the direction of Harold Bloom. His MFA in Poetry is from the University of Iowa. Haven's work has appeared in Southern Review, American Poetry Review, Parnassus, Crazyhorse, Guernica, American Journal of Poetry, Arts & Letters, The Common, Blackbird, European Journal of International Law, Missouri Review, North American Review, Montreal Review, Western Humanities Review, World Literature Today, and in many other journals. He is the founding director of the low-residency MFA Program at Ashland University, in Ashland, Ohio, where he served the program for ten years. He later directed the low-residency MFA Program at Lesley University. For many years he taught American literature at both Ashland University and Lesley University. He also served as editor or director of the Ashland Poetry Press for more than 20 years.
