Small Boat with Oars of Different Size: Poems

71 pp. "Embodying high spirits and good humor, and romantic, too, Small Boat pushes off from the strings and gratifications of the domestic, and finds a wide channel of sense and empathy. The easy intensity here, and the poet's committed alertness, drew me in. --Marvin Bell. [The poems] combine precise natural detail with an ability to abstract and assay our lives. Small Boat with Oars of Different Size is an impressive debut by a poet who makes his language thump while it names and probes. --Stephen Dunn." ABOUT THE AUTHOR: "Thom Ward is a poet and educator. His full-length collections of poetry include Small Boat with Oars of Different Size (2000), Various Orbits (2004), and Etcetera's Mistress (2011). His chapbook, Tumblekid (2000), won the Devil's Millhopper Award in 1998. He has also published a collection of prose poems, The Matter of the Casket (2007). A former editor at BOA Editions, over his 15 years with the press he helped edit more than 80 collections of poetry, including three books by Lucille Clifton. He currently runs his own editing and proofreading service and is a faculty and advisory board member at Wilke's University Graduate Creative Writing program. He lives in western New York."--Poetry Foundation