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CALL FROM PARIS

Prartho Sereno

2007 Washington Prize winner. Song, incantation and a disarming but everyday mysticism punctuate the poems of Prartho Sereno. She creates a universe that is both exotic and familiar. Cover art is by the author.

ISBN 0-915380-68-4

Paper:$10
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FLESH THAT WAS CHRYSALIS

Mel Belin

This collection stakes out huge territory on family, love, sex, morality.  Jay Parini applauds the "musical and vivid language," how the poet invokes swans to summon "the old world rising" or meditates "on a haunting biblical tale."  Word Works Capital Collection publication. Cover art by Noi Volkov.

ISBN 0-915380-40-4

Paper: $10


FLEUR CARNIVORE

Richard Lyons

2005 Washington Prize. "Like the solos of the jazz greats who inhabit his pages, LyonsŐ poems are exploratory, nervy, emotionally rich, and possess a keen command of craft." David Wojahn. Cover art by Hamlett Dobbins.

ISBN 0-915380-61-7

Paper: $10


FOLLOWING FRED ASTAIRE

Nathalie Anderson

1998 Washington Prize winner.  "Anderson's keen eye illuminates our socially-constructed ideas of gender and identity, the various mannerisms and dancesteps we consider appropriate for women and men."--Marcus Cafagna.  Cover Art by Perky Edgerton

ISBN 0-915380-41-2

Paper: $10


GANDHI'S LAP

Charlotte Gould Warren

2000 Washington Prize winner. Warren depicts growing up in India, childhood abuse, and coming to terms with her past in lyrical narrative poems that demonstrate the triumph of the human spirit--a product of hard-won wisdom. Cover art by Charlotte Gould Warren.

ISBN 0-915380-46-3

Paper:$10


GILBERT AND GARBO IN LOVE

Christopher Conlon

Enthrallingly imagined, Conlon's poems blend Hollywood's reality and history with the lives of these two idols of the silent screen, their passion's brightest hours, their darkest fears. He makes Gilbert and Garbo live again! Capital Collection. Cover design by Janice Olson. Read what Monseurat Review said.

ISBN 0-915380-54-4

Paper:$10


GREEN BODIES

Rosemary Winslow

Poems of richly woven images and lyrics that inquire why people love and harm each other. Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Cover art by John Winslow.

ISBN 0-915380-54-4 ISBN13 978-0-915380-67-1

Paper:$10


THE GOOD OPINION OF SQUIRRELS

Michael Schaffner

"The subject of these savagely smart, moving poems is who now lives in America's parks, cities, and exurbs...."-- Elizabeth Macklin. Schaffner mixes free verse and poetic forms in his meditations on home, safe havens, and politics. A Word Works Capital Collection publication and Writer's Center Edition.  1997 winner of the Columbia Book Award.

ISBN 0-915380-34-X

Paper:$10


THE HABIT OF FIRE: POEMS SELECTED & NEW

Judith McCombs

A look at nature -- the great outdoors, humankind. Word Works Capital Collection. Monseurat Review said. Small Press Review Said.

ISBN 0-915380-57-9

Paper:$10


THE HAT CITY AFTER MEN STOPPED WEARING HATS

John Surowiecki

Gritty, working-class life passed through the lens of the author's clarifying and radiant imagination which results in disturbing and often funny poems. Cover photo by Robert Reichert.

ISBN 0-915380-64-1 ISBN13 978-0-915380-64-0

Paper:$10


HICKEY, THE DAYS . . .

J.H. Beall

A physicist and poet examines inner and outer worlds in visions that articulate the age. A poet/artist collaboration with photographs by Chester Michalik. LIMITED STOCK AVAILABLE. ORDER NOW!

ISBN 0-915380-09-9

Paper:$10


JUDGING THE DISTANCE

Doris Brody

The poet's affinity for birds and nature leads us from familiar backyards to exotic jungles in intimate explorations of the human wilderness. Pen and ink drawing by Zander Brody. Word Works Capital Collection.

ISBN 0-915380-47-1

Paper:$10


LAST HEAT

Peter Blair

1999 Washington Prize winner.  Poems that explore creation, violence, and survival in a Pittsburgh steel mill and how this dynamic weaves into family life, especially the universal "mill" of the father son, brother-brother relationships. "Peter Blair's poetry takes me right inside where I've never been, the working life of a steel mill, the love between fathers and sons, brothers and working men. God is in the details, and they are good and strong here."--Alicia Ostriker.

ISBN 0-915380-44-7

Paper: $10


LOVE-IN-IDLENESS

John Bradley

1989 Washington Prize winner. Bradley portrays Roberto Zingarello, a fictitious, postwar Italian poet who bursts onto the horizon hauling the weight of the Twentieth Century. Mussonlini, Pound, Vallejo, Rilke haunt his imagination. Zingarello has an enormous appetite for love, truth, revenge. Cover art by Erica Daborn.

ISBN 0-915380-24-2

Paper:$10


LOVE'S SKIN

Brandon D. Johnson

Travel Love's Skin, a blues noir journey past juke joints, conjure men selling high john at the crossroads and red-dressed revenge. Cover photograph by Mignonette E. Dooley. Hilary Tham Capital Collection.

ISBN 0-915380-63-3

Paper:$10


MARY FALLS: REQUIEM FOR MRS. SURRATT

Christopher Conlon

A vivid imagining of the life, death and afterlife of Mary Surratt, convicted conspirator in the Lincoln assassination and the first woman to be executed by the U.S. government. Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Cover design by Janice Olson.

ISBN 0-915380-54-4 ISBN13 978-0-915380-65-7

Paper:$10


ONE HUNDRED CHILDREN WAITING FOR A TRAIN

Michael Atkinson

2001 Washington Prize winner. Using cinema as a ruling metaphor, Atkinson's debut volume directly engages old Hollywood, alcoholism, parenthood, the afterlife, Dostoyevsky's widow, and America herself seen through a weathered windshield. Cover art by Lawrence Gipe.

ISBN 0-915380-50-1

Paper:$10



PHOENIX SUITES

Miles Waggener

2002 Washington Prize winner. The desert of the Southwest is the landscape of this poet's meditations on time, civilizations, and the heart's painful lessons. Waggener wields language like a magician, language that excites, exults and leads to discoveries about ourselves and our relationship to the desert. Cover art by Matt Hamon.

ISBN 0-915380-52-8

Paper:$10



PINECREST REST HAVEN

Grace Cavalieri

In a home for the elderly, Mr. and Mrs. P no longer remember they're married to each other. Much to the dismay of the Mrs., the flirtatious Coco and Muriel pursue Mr. P. Anger, jealousy, greed and lust, the human traits Shakespeare plumbed still animate the residents of Pinecrest Rest Haven. These poems are heart-stoppingly comic. A Word Works Capital Collection publication. Also available in audio cassette.

ISBN 0-915380-39-0

Paper:$10


ROLLERCOASTER

Miles David Moore

Childhood bullies who bedevil the vulnerable—including Fatslug, Moore's poster boy for low self-esteem—sometimes grow up to be dictators. Cover photo by Christopher Hubble. Monseurat Review said.

ISBN 0-915380-56-0

Paper:$10


SOLOMON IBN GABIROL: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HIS POEMS IN TRANSLATION

Isaac Goldberg

A comprehensive bibliography on the most significant of the major Hebrew poets of the Jewish Golden Age of Spain (10th- 12th centuries), Solomon Ibn Gabirol. This essential research tool indexes individual poems, their translations and their locations. Recommended for scholars, students, libraries and research collections of medieval Hebrew and comparative poetry. Word Works International Edition.

ISBN 0-915380-37-4

Paper: $35


SPINOZA'S MOUSE

George Young

1996 Washington Prize winner. A physician casts his eye on the world and finds it full of marvelous things. Young's poems are vivid celebrations of nature, medical practice, and compelling historical figures. Cover art by Richard Blackmore.

ISBN 0-915380-35-8

Paper:$10


STALKING THE FLORIDA PANTHER

Enid Shomer

1985 Washington Prize winner. This book invites the reader into the heart of a female character who is sometimes an angry child, sometimes a worldly and sensual woman. Cover art by Paloma Cernuda. Second printing. Also from University of Iowa Press: IMAGINARY MEN, winner of lowa Short Fiction Award and the LSU Award for the best first collection of stories by an American author.

ISBN 0-915380-2l-8

Paper:$10


THE STONES REMEMBER

co-edited by Moshe Dor, Barbara Goldberg, and Giora Leshem

An anthology of 50 contemporary Israeli poets including Gouri, Carmi, Ravikovitch. "This collection reveals, in memorable poetry superbly translated, the shape of a land and the spirit of a people," writes William Jay Smith. Many of these poems, representative of the Native School, appear in English for the first time. Recipient of the Witter Bynner Foundation Award; selected by Choice as Outstanding Academic Book in l993. Cover art by Moshe Castel. Also by Moshe Dor, KHAMSIN: MEMOIRS AND POETRY BY A NATIVE ISRAELI (Three Continents Press).

ISBN 0-915380-25-0

Paper:$15


SUN, MOON, SALT

Nancy White

1992 Washington Prize winner. Desire. Hunger. Sorrow. These poems reveal how memory lives in the body and the body transcends memory. Cover art by Kathy Keler 6 pieces, oil on canvas.

ISBN 0-915380-29-3

Paper:$10


SURVIVABLE WORLD

Ron Mohring

2003 Washington Prize winner. Poetry "with an emotional honesty that gives voice to the ever-changing 'vectors of promise of loss' in a world marked by the devastation of AIDS."—Betsy Sholl. Cover Art by Fred Wilkinson.

ISBN 0-915380-55-2

Paper:$10


TIPPING POINT

Fred Marchant

1993 Washington Prize winner. As a demolition expert handles explosives, this book carefully explores a continuum of violence from domestic strife to the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. These poems dramatize the spiritual an d artistic dilemmas created by the traumas of our time. Cover print by Nona Hershey. Second printing.

ISBN 0-915380-30-7

Paper:$10


TOWARD DESIRE

Linda Lee Harper

1995 Washington Prize Winner. The men, women, and children of TOWARD DESIRE run into naked emotion, sometimes accidentally. In these poems, Linda Lee Harper masterfully builds a compelling human story. What happens in one family's kitchen will haunt you long after the last page is read. Cover art is a woodblock print "Homage to the Earth" by Barbara Kerne.

ISBN 0-915380-33-1

Paper: $10


WANDERING ON THE OUTSIDE

Karren L. Alenier

Poetry that embraces life from birth to black holes. First Billee Murray Denny Award Winner. Second edition. Cover art by Paris Pacchione.

ISBN 0-915380-00-5

Paper:$8


WHISKEY IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Sarah Browning

Explores the meaning of political activism and personal responsiblity in a time of war, while mapping the capital city—its changes, its history, its beautiful variety. Hilary Tham Capital Collection.

ISBN 0-915380-66-8 ISBN13 978-0-915380-66-4

Paper:$10


WHOSE WOODS THESE ARE

edited by Karren L. Alenier

A journal combining poems, anecdotes, and photographs based on eight years of programs at the Joaquin Miller Cabin in Washington, DC. The collection includes Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Taylor, E. Ethelbert Miller, Maureen Owen, Rick Peabody, Washington Prize winners Barbara Goldberg and Susan Gubernat, among others. Cover design by Janice Olson.

ISBN 0-915380-18-8

Paper:$8


WINNERS: A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE WASHINGTON PRIZE

edited by Karren L. Alenier, Hilary Tham, and Miles David Moore

Poems, anecdotes, and insightful information by the winners, judges, and contest readers of the Word Works Washington Prize from 1981 to 1999. Get the inside track on how to win this prize and how it has benefitted former winners. Cover art by Janice Olson.  For a review of this book, go to berniE-zine Reviews.

ISBN 0-915380-43-9

Paper: $20


A WOMAN FROM MEMPHIS

Robert Sargent

Sargent's richly imbued southern voice sings for William James, Cavafy, and Joyce with wit, clarity, and a wild streak. Second edition. Revised cover design includes a new collector photograph by William Christenberry.

ISBN 0-915380-07-2

Paper:$10

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