Catalog

The exceptional collection of poems that draw upon the experience, craft, and insights of Douglas M. Smith of Chelsea, Michigan, a writer who has spent more than thirty years in the field of social work.

The Orchard Street Press
P.O. Box 280; Gates Mills, Ohio 44040
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 330-264-7733
orchpress.com

Spring, 2019

It is with great pleasure that The Orchard Street Press announces the publication of The Walls Around the Ring, the first chapbook from Patrick Synan, an exciting young poet from Watertown, Massachusetts.

A full collection of poems from well-known poet and editor Peter C. Leverich of Mahnasset, New YorkThe poems engage nature on a very personal level and convey the poet’s joy in and appreciation for the large and small wonders of the earth, woods, wind, and water.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

“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.”