Thoroughly enjoyed A Ranch Bordering the Salty River! A story so close to nature told in poetry. My absolute favorite -“This Morning” Thank you Stephen!

– Laura Berman

I have read most of the poems you had put in the ranch book before. However I wanted to read them in the order you placed in the book. I did it twice. I really enjoyed the flow. Really enjoyed it.

– Deborah Page

“Stephen Page’s “A Ranch Bordering the Salty River” is a unique collection of poems whose main subject is an American managing a large ranch in Argentina. Generally an unsentimental account of chores, local workers and natural wonders, Page presents striking and convincing images and diction. The Wild West is still alive, but it’s in South America.”

– Ed Ochester

This is a short collection of thought provoking poems surrounding a gaucho life in Argentina, the culture of Argentina and it’s beauty and flow. A welcome addition to any collection on Argentina culture and poetry.

– Ross Ferg

Blurb from Colette Inez

This strong and unerringly honest book gives us a unique perspective of a poet/rancher. The poet (his books and diplomas hidden in a secret room) has an insightful grasp of the largely uneasy worker-boss relationship and makes poems out of his ambivalence. Page’s world of horses, cows, birds, grasses, native flowers, and trees are evoked with a mix of lyricism and exactitude. We come to trust his attachment to the land and to his wife and to his wife’s family. All this with a glimmer of a love story in which we may imagine what brought this erudite poet to gaucho country add up to a memorable collection.

– Colette Inez, author of The Luba Poems

Finishing Line Press

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

Mother Nature, the world of the gauchos, bees, an Argentine ranch:  with vivid accuracy and little sentimentality, Stephen Page delineates the sensibilities and life of Jonathan, a rancher. The afternoon mate taken, observations of cattle, mosquitoes, flora and fauna not only of the physical landscape, but the mental landscape of those that inhabit it, Page returns again and again to the restorative old ways of nature: “Yesterday I walked to the Wood. / Yesterday I walked back. / Yesterday I walked. Yesterday / I want to return to the Wood, / To the way it was.”

– Mộng-Lan, author of One Thousand Minds Brimming.

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

A Ranch Bordering the Salty River is a character-driven poetic narrative filled with suspense, cruelty, love of mate, goddesses, Teresa, family, and nature that nature that coexists with cattle, cattle ranches, and gauchos alike. There are heroes—Jonathan the narrator and The Horseback Vet—juxtaposed with villains of all sorts which one is likely to encounter on ranches. At the “Tree root” Jonathan (a man of many occupations besides ranching) longs not to be driven by soy-for-profit which his business partner urges: “to plow away more of my grass, shot the quail, trap the armadillos, flit away the mockingbird, spray to death the flowers, plant genetically modified soy, sterilize my herd to nothing”; rather, he wants “Transformations” – “let the cattle feed…keep the fields clovered…take daily strolls in the quiet of the Wood…watch for hours bumblebees work, and lock eyes with the mockingbird.” Jonathan has this unescapable longing “to return to the wood/To the way it was.” Stephen Page will take you there and upon returning, you too will be changed.

– Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, author of Images of Being

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]