For the most recent releases from The Press (approximately the last six months), please check The Latest tab. This ‘Publications’ tab provides snapshot information about books we have published over the past several years. If you would like additional information about any of these, please contact The Press, either via email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or by phone (330-264-7733).
The books are listed on the following pages by the year in which they were released. Bio information about the writers is contained in a new ‘Our Writers’ section.
2019 Publications
All titles are available from The Press for $12 unless otherwise noted; checks to: The Orchard Street Press; P.O. Box 280; Gates Mills, Ohio 44040
The Walls Around the Ring
by Patrick Synan of Watertown, Massachusetts.
This is an exciting new voice who brings great energy and fresh insight onto this engaging first collection. J. N. Fishhawk of the Bacopa Literary Review says of this book: “These are traveling poems, moving from the bedroom to the classroom, to the cab of a truck, to riverside cliffs, and to New England pastures by way of India, Spain, and central America. This is a book made to be carried along and read as the poems give the impression they were composed in the quiet spaces of pause and reflection that interrupt our journeys, whether we are walking home from the store or crossing oceans to find new homes.”
Art Preserves What Can’t be Saved
by Carolyn Dahl of Houston, Texas.
This beautiful book by a poet who is also an artist engages the reader intellectually, emotionally, and aesthetically. Author and Editor Gabrielle Langley observes: “Carolyn Dahl brings us into a luminous world where art, theater, travel, time, and memory intersect. This is a poet’s odyssey exquisitely contained in one volume. From a pastoral landscape painted by Gainsborough to the backless-dressed young woman who flirts with an aging luminary, Dahl deftly brings us into a timeless theater of light and shadow. Hers is a surreal yet redemptive landscape, where flowers are reimagined as ‘an edible form of cherries,’ where ‘suicide snowflakes refuse to fall.’” ($15)
Scream Queen
by Kiara Nicole Letcher of Omaha, Nebraska.
Drawing on the depiction of women in gothic tales and horror films, Letcher’s poems often startle us and put us off balance, but they do so in a way that brings us to a new view of things. Emily Borgmann says: “I’ve been waiting for an exit sign to send away mu ghosts. You’ve waited, too. Here it is. This book will bring you back to where you can hear yourself scream, that comfort. Steve Langan writes: “Kiara Letcher guides us through the many haunted houses of Scream Queen—to the other side, where we are relieved, changed, even reassembled.”
Blaze
by Peter C. Leverich of Manhasset, New York.
Leverich’s long experience as an editor of volumes of nature poetry and his love for the natural world are on full display in this fine volume. Margaret Bobalek of Derry, New Hampshire says that this work, “captures the open sea, the bluster of wind, the seagulls crying, the eternal elements beating on your skin.” Holly Diane Shaw of New York City comments,”I felt as if I were there, inside the poems; they remind me of some of my favorite poets: Kenyon, Oliver, Paley, Howe.”
Social Work and Other Myths
by Douglas M. Smith from Sylvan Township, Michigan.
Smith, a social worker and community organizer for forty-one years, draws on the depth of experiences in places like Chicago, Detroit, and rural Western Washtenaw County, to craft poems that resonate with the truth of those places and the people there. M.L. Liebler, author and ci-founder of the Midwest Literary Walk, says: “Doug Smith’s poems shine a light on the cruelty of our society and, yet, offers hoe to nourish souls. Award-winning playwright Brian Cox observes,” These poems beseech us to identify with the humanity in the desperate, the afflicted, the abandoned, the evicted, and the exiled.” This is a book that will engage readers in the most elemental human way. ($15)
Quiet Diamonds, 2019
The annual poetry journal from Orchard Street.
In this edition, forty-one poems from twenty eight poets were selected from the entries to the 2019 Orchard Street Press Poetry Contest. John Grey, poet, playwright, and musician says of the 2019 journal: “Here is a collection that bursts with a riveting and engaging potpourri of style and substance, of poets connecting with the natural world, their own humanity, and the humanity of others, delving into experiences with keen intelligence and original turn of phrase.” John Sheirer, Editor of Freshwater Literary Journal, writes: “The poets of Quiet Diamonds connect humanity and nature, emotion and thought, hope and regret, and experience and reflection with grace, wisdom, and a dizzying facility of language.” This is an excellent collection, reflecting a pool of very good entries from across the country. ($15)
2018 Publications
Available for $12 unless otherwise marked
Wakeful Fathers and Dreaming Sons
by Sean Lause’ of Lima, Ohio
The Third Place winner in Orchard Street’s 2017 Chapbook Contest, this book is a marvelous collection of poems about post-industrial America, fathers and sons, and the large and small things that make up the fabric of life. This is a book about faith, love, persistence, and the questions of life, some answered, some beyond our reach. Thankfully, the challenge of these difficult questionsdoes not deter Sean Lause’ from reaching, which is what this book is about.
Riverstory : Treestory
by Bill Griffin of Elkin, North Carolina.
Shelby Stephenson, for Poet Laureate of North Carolina says: “Bill Griffin’s collection flows and grows with ease into more runs and swings as Nature makes its call, whether thrush or granite, seedling of shadow. Riverstory : Treestory is one special book, a hymn to growing things—and love, the soul awakening to join the self, singing with bird, mountain, and leaf.” Poet Pat Riviere-Seel notes: The reader may let go, but these poems will remain with you, a part of a larger story.”
Vital Signs
by Joyce S. Brown of Baltimore, Maryland.
Joyce Brown’s poems take a remarkably fresh look at things we see (or perhaps, miss) every day, and they breathe a life into them that transforms them into experiences, lessons even that stay with us. In “Trip Home,” she writes: The death I’ve planned,/put up like a jar of peach preserves,/comes late in life, in bed, my dogs at hand,/the basement finally waterproofed/and clean/my piano tuned. I grieve,/but reach for God, and face the music/which is always Brahms.” The reader is treated to thoughtfulness and craft like that throughout this book.
The Hungry Man
by Thomas A. West, Jr. of Morrison, Colorado.
About The Hungry Man, Author and Educator Phillip McFarland writes: “West’s poetry is filled with pleasures: of varied subject matter; of fresh, apt imagery; of surprising yet always just diction; and a style without a feather of padding—clean, concise, and accessible. And over it all hovers a poet’s heart filled with empathy and feeling. This collection provides us with moving experiences from first to last.”
Fountain Nook
by Joanne Lehman of Wooster, Ohio.
“The first full-length collection by Joanne Lehman takes us into the nooks and founts of her imagination and memory where rural family members “kept their distance” and their wits and teach her the balanced nature of life deeply lived on “this side of the river,” where, for “every seven sours” there are “seven sweets.” The book celebrates both loss and wonder-filled discovery in poems that sustain us all.” ($15)
Carolyn Wright, poet and author
Quiet Diamonds, 2018
The first poetry annual of The Orchard Street Press.
Drawn from the entries from The Press’ first annual Poetry Contest, Quiet Diamonds, 2018 consists of forty-four poems from thirty-three poets. Diane Kendig, professor, poet, and author, says of the collection: “Quiet Diamonds reminded me that the Greek origin of the word ‘anthology’ meant “a collection of flowers,” because the poems here are as varied as those in a botanical garden, as long-lasting, and bright as diamonds. Breathe and read deeply here.” ($15)
Vanishing Point
by Megan Anderson Bohigian of Fresno, California.
Len Herrick, former Poet Laureate of Fresno, writes: “Vanishing Point is a pure delight: each poem is full of grace and wonder about our relationship with the natural world, exploring astonishment and certainty, belief and memory, and damage and repair.” Award-winning poet Corrine Clegg Hales, says: “This is an extraordinary new collection by a poet who has mastered her craft and who speaks of life in this world with precision, grace, and often startling clarity.”
Blind Season
by James Scruton from McKenzie, Tennessee.
James is an award-winning poet and a Professor of Literature whose work in this volume demonstrates the kind of art and craft that prompted the following remarks from American Poet Laureate Billy Collins: “James Scruton likes to stand on an observable fact and then reach for something beyond: a bit of science is often all he needs to launch these poems into their appealing orbits. Poet Dick Allen calls Scruton’s work, “meticulously crafted poems…over and over, ordinary things…are transformed.”
Anubis Stands Close By
by Ben Onachila of Brevard, North Carolina.
“Onachila’s work pulls the reader through a gamut of emotions, carefully weaving vivid imagery that paints pictures that either elicit tears or laughter. I am particularly drawn to Onachila’s uncanny ability to present pieces as memories that evoke not only past sentiments, but unfold as relevant even today. Simultaneously, Onachila is effortlessly cunning in connecting the reader to the “human condition” using subtle humor, often ending with a little.”
Leslie P. Borhaug, multi-genre author
Homecoming
by Ben Onachila.
These are poems that bring our eye and mind close to the beauty of nature in both its finest detail and in its grandeur. In “The Ocotillo Forest,” he writes: “The Ocotillo forest bides its time. It combs the lean light of dawn and dusk/choosing only the finest threads, thin as a melody line, upon which to weave its desert song.” This is an exquisite gallery from Mr. Onachila’s very capable pen.
2016-17 Publications
All of these books are available for $12.00 (unless marked otherwise) from Orchard Street at P.O. Box 280; Gates Mills, Ohio 44040.
The Timekeeper’s Garden
by John P. Kristofco.
“These contemplative poems are simple in construct and profound in impact as the poet’s world is tempered through eyes of his adult self. The poems grow slowly more philosophical: the dazed fly crawling on a window pane becomes a metaphor for his father, a caged bird a metaphor for the writer. You will nod, you will shake your head, you will smile, and you will return to these poems again.
Ann Howells, Editor of Illya’s Honey
if you follow a crooked river…
by Joe Cheslock.
From places and time that go back to the fifties, Joe Cheslock thoughtfully considers his experiences in “poems of Cleveland and other sacred places.” We are, as Cheslock says, very much who and what we are because of “where we were born, grew up, and worked. These poems explores this ‘ancestry’ of his life in engaging and thought-provoking lines.
Heat Lightning
by Susan Christine Waters from Hobbs, New Mexico
(Second Place winner in the 2017 Orchard Street Press Chapbook Contest)
This is a book of remarkable images and insights. Consider these lines from “Deaf Mary:” When you signed, a magician’s doves flew/ from your hands. Some words burst/through the air like pheasants/surprised in tall grass.” Waters’ engagement with the details of life and living create a truly rewarding experience for the reader.
The Sun’s Banquet Table
by Susanne Freeman of Ingram, Texas
(Won First Prize in the 2017 Orchard Street Press Chapbook Contest)
She describes herself as someone who “lives on the outskirts of the Milky Way in the Texas Hill Country, where she is an avid practitioner of Internet avoidance.” What she does not avoid, however, is a love for language and the images that help share human experience with others. Consider the opening lines from “The Orchard Keeper: “Wonder if he’s still farming/the wind, the weathers,’ the feathers and petals, cold fragile harvest/of marginal land.”
a matter of voice
by Mary Hotlen of Rockford Illinois
(A Finalist in the 2017 Orchard Street Press Chapbook Contest)
“a matter of voice” set itself apart from other entries by the quality of its language use, its clarity. In beautiful poems that prosper in their economy of language, this collection will impress the reader who appreciates good poetry as exquisite craft. Consider these lines that begin the poem "Heart:" Her heart is/Clasped hands/That steeple a/Fear she holds/Close.
all the stars that once were
by Joe Cheslock of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
In a follow-up to if you follow a crooked river, which explored the places that helped form him as a man, Cheslock does the same with people who have been the primary influences in his life. By the time readers finish the book, they will feel as though they knew these people, that they have come to care about them. Cincinnati poet Richard Hague says of all the stars….: these poems are unassuming, straightforwardly nostalgic, sentiment-filled, and chock full of the decency and worth of everyday life.”
Going Back to Africa
by Scott Gregory of Wooster, Ohio.
In the summer of 2016, Scott Gregory, having completed a successful career as a special ed teacher, took a ‘trip of a lifetime’ to Africa, an adventure more than fifty years in the making, deriving from his boyhood experience, his passion and sense of curiosity, and an abundant sense of pride in his heritage. This travel journal, along with its pictures, engages us from the beginning with its sense of excitement, wonder, and the ever-present voice and wit of its author. ($15)