Stephen Page was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, where he worked in factories, diemaker toolrooms, and steel-cutting shops-all the while longing for a vocation associated with nature. He now lives in Argentina where he had the opportunity to learn how to ranch and farm.

Books by Stephen Page:

Other poems on the web by Stephen Page:
Three poems

Stephen Page's Website.

About A Ranch Bordering the Salty River:

"Half Frost, half Hemingway, Stephen Page tells a gripping tale in verse of a rancher disenchanted with the details of administering land, its livestock, and its unreliable laborers, only to be called by the mythic lure of the nearby Wood and the amorphous deity that emerges to encounter him. The writing here is clean and lovely and permanent, which is rare in storytelling and rarer still in poetry."
—Rustin Larson

"For Jonathan and Teresa, who live on A Ranch Bordering the Salty River, life is rich with pleasures and responsibilities. Set in the vast landscape of Argentina, where 'summer is a bread oven that delivers too early' and '"the gauchos once stopped to drink mate in front of the fire," Stephen Page's poems describe a life where the border between place and state of being are often crossed at a heavy price. The air is scented with eucalyptus, but there are vultures "heavy along the fenceline." In this place where "they do not honor absentmindedness," a man has little latitude in life's juggle of work, love, and spiritual journey. Page manages this precariousness beautifully in these poems."
—Leslie McGrath

"'Enter the myth' of Stephen Page's Argentine estancia of moonrings and mate in this love letter to a woman and her land from a former soldier who has 'holstered (his) gun and sheathed I (his) knife and got down to the business I of grass.' A Ranch Boidering the Salty River is a beautiful meditation on counting and 'uncounting," of "eucalypti and sycamores," cattle and cattle thieves, yard hands, a growing family, trials, blessings, legends, and of overseeing a wooded eco-ranch."
—Chip Livingston

"Stephen Page opens the gates to Jonathan's ranch where 'the sky is so large' and we walk withJonathan 'into the myth of the Wood, the legend of its shade, to lick the dew off leaves.' We ride horseback through the Belt of Venus. We greet Jonathan's dog, who arrives 'as a moon phase, mostly black, a crescent tie of white ... the sun reflected off (his) chest (sic) like a journeying god riding a chariot". We meet Teresa, Jonathan's wife, who 'no longer wanders the Wood, but cradles her child in the bleach of her kitchen.' We encounter 'mountainous dragons with fire-wet tongues and hot breath and teeth like jagged sun-bleached rocks.' We carry belt knives, hand guns, and stand outside Malingerer's home with hammers in our hand. Yes, Page invites us onto A Ranch Bordming the Salty Rum· with all its beauty and violence. It is a visit we will long remember."
—g emil reutter