Etcetera's Mistress

Poetry October 2010 ISBN 978-1-936628-03-2 Softcover, 6" x 9"

Etcetera's Mistress is Accents Publishing's first full-length book of poetry, written by award-winning poet Thom Ward. "Reading Thom Ward is to enter a brilliant and restless imagination – sometimes poignant, sometimes crazy-with-a-purpose, but always with a deep lucidity in the logic of its illogic. His poems remind me how much we need language and how much the language needs us." - Thomas Lux, Author of God Particles

faith

Review in The Washington Independent Review of Books

From the Book

Actually, However

He fell, and fell hard, like his heart was a mob informant and she
the East River. Actually, he was a mob informant, the only
way to advance his stalled career on the squad. She, however,
was not the East River but the black leather, blue-eyed mistress
of Butch the Barracuda. Few salt water fish in the East River;
however, there were plenty of decomposing informants, even he
knew that, knew her mouth was moist as a June strawberry,
cartons shipped from the docks along with the guns and the crack.
Actually, he had never kissed her, though he knew how succulent
she would taste, especially at night, along the shore of the East River;
however, at the card table in the back of the warehouse, he called
Butch by his Christian name, instantly blowing his cover, the cold
bullet finding his brain, and he now finding himself sinking in the
East River, which he always knew had never, actually, been her.

What Others Say

Reading Thom Ward is to enter a brilliant and restless imagination – sometimes poignant, sometimes crazy-with-a-purpose, but always with a deep lucidity in the logic of its illogic. His poems remind me how much we need language and how much the language needs us.

— Thomas Lux

On Thom Ward's diagram of the day, no line, border, or boundary exists between dark and light sides. They overlay one another with rich and haunting texture. His navigational map, his poetic GPS, locates a landscape full of brilliantly wry and tender intelligences.

— Naomi Shihab Nye

Waxing or waning, the moon's aloft in Thom Ward's stunning new prose poems, jingling sonnets, and philosophical forays, with Ward dangling from the same moon like a lovely Shakespearean fool. Here he swings nightly, panting and sweating in his night sweats and sweatpants, and caroling across the chasms of loneliness, kicking around the stars. Who better than Ward to help us love?

— Alan Michael Parker

Reviews

Grace Cavalieri provides a solid, insightful review of Thom Ward's poetry book

About the Author

Thom Ward

Thom Ward is sole proprietor of Thom Ward's Poetry Editing and Proofreading Services (thombward@gmail.com). Ward's poetry collections include Small Boat with Oars of Different Size (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000) and Various Orbits (Carnegie Mellon, 2004). Ward's poetry chapbook, Tumblekid, winner of the 1998 Devil's Millhopper poetry contest, was published by the University of South Carolina-Aiken in 2000. His collection of prose poems, The Matter of the Casket, was published by CustomWords in 2007. Ward teaches creative writing workshops at high schools and colleges around the country, tutors individual poetry students, and edits poetry manuscripts. He is a faculty and advisory board member at Wilkes University's Graduate Creative Writing program in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Thom Ward lives in western New York with his girlfriend Jennifer and their cat Phantom.