From the Publisher
Small Boat with Oars of Different Size is a poetry book that combines the playful and the meditative, the music of honed language and the force of the imagination. Ten years in the making, Ward's debut collection speaks to contemporary American life at the end of the 20th century, and the ambiguity and ambivalence of what it means to be human.
From the Back Cover
"Embodying high spirits and good humor, and romantic, too, Thom Ward's Small Boat pushes off from the stings and gratifications of the domestic, and finds a wide channel of sense and empathy. "Art is only/ a portal to love," he writes, who has made a writer's pact with the days. The easy intensity here, and the poet's committed alertness drew me in." - Marvin Bell.
"We aren't the first to wake/ with wounds we thought sleep would salve," Thom Ward concludes in his fine poem "Stray Dogs, Foaming," one of many that combines precise natural detail with an ability to abstract and assay our lives. Small Boat with Oars of Different Size is an impressive debut by a poet who makes his language thump while it names and probes." - Stephen Dunn
"Thom Ward writes with tremendous imaginative energy and an exceptional ear. The former is rare enough. The latter is even more rare. When both are combined in one poet, one books, well, that's a miracle." - Thomas Lux
