Etcetera's Mistress

Etcetera’s Mistress
Thom Ward

Accents Publishing

Paperback: 60 pages
Publisher: Accents Publishing (September 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1936628031
ISBN-13: 978-1936628032

Accents Publishing launches its Full-Length World Poetry Series with a daring new collection of poetry by award-winning author Thom Ward, complete with original cover art by acclaimed artist DeLoss McGraw.

From reading the very first poem, the reader realizes Ward has an overabundance of imagination and brilliance. His words rush in and out like the high and low tides slapping against the beach.

In Goldfinch, Cockroach:

Once in a while my soul exits this body,
Goes shopping for another house of flesh.

Reminds me of times when my soul is tired of grieving and goes in search of something more cheery.

In Actually, However:

He fell, and fell hard, like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River….

This poem brought back visions of The Sopranos, the hit HBO television series.

My favorite part of this book is the section on the Howhatwhywherewhen Bone, a collection of 13 poems all having to do with how, what, why, where, and when. In the Contraband of the Howhatwhywherewhen Bone:

crosses all borders
and disappears
into marrow intelligence

what is to say
bone understands

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.