Books published by 1st World Publishing

"Dorothy Wall consistently uses language as a tool to expose her own vulnerabilities and the frailties of the world. Her pen leaves nothing unturned, unexamined-joy and grief receive the same scrutiny and, as a result of that process, the source is rediscovered and offered to the reader as a small gift."~ Stewart Florsheim, author of A Split Second of Light "In Identity Theory, Dorothy Wall 'holds aside marble folds / exposing the white undersheen, / a monument to the art of / disrobing.' This collection moves from objective, almost statue-like representations of emotional realities to a world of passion and uncertainty wherein a dead mother begins 'talking almost every day.' These clean, well- wrought poems bring alive the personal struggles of a master poet."~ Charles Entrekin, author of Listening: New & Selected Work "This is the poet who will ground you inside terrain where you can walk around in wonder, yet lift you to heights that give a view of the world that is transformative. This poet has mastered her craft with an attention so meticulous and so fine-tuned, so sensitive and sensory that it has resulted in this body of work, one that deserves to be read over and over."~ Andrena Zawinski, author of Something About, PEN-Oakland Award recipient Dorothy Wall is author of Catalogue of Surprises: Poems (Blue Light Press), Identity Theory: New and Selected Poems (Blue Light Press) and Encounters with the Invisible: Unseen Illness, Controversy, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Southern Methodist University Press), and coauthor of Finding Your Writer's Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction (St. Martin's Press). Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net, and her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Schooner, Witness, Bellevue Literary Review, Sonora Review, Cimarron Review, AMA Journal of Ethics, California Magazine, The Writer, Dos Passos Review, Nimrod, Puerto del Sol, San Francisco Chronicle and others. She has taught poetry and fiction writing at Napa Valley College, San Francisco State University, and U.C. Berkeley Extension, and works as a writing coach in Oakland.

Philip Kobylarz's poems, essays, and short stories appear in such journals as The Iowa Review, Paris Review, and Massachusetts Review. Currently he is engaged in the study of how to be/not be.Rues presents often fascinating views of how the mind might build analogues for the way disparate situations come to constitute a place. The poems build haphazard acts of attention into quasi-surreal urban extensions of haiku. The primary effect is our involvement in intricate fields of feeling-for what gathers the elements together and for our own capacities of surprise that we come to care about that gathering. -Charles AltieriThe tender little meditations that compose Rues are windows onto a landscape, not precisely real but not not real either. "All views are interiors," Kobylarz reminds us, nonetheless presenting a spectacle of gorgeously observed worldly wonders. From the "hoodoos of shit" dogs leave on the street to the "slow burning aureoles" of women smoking in the "almost nude," the real, the imagined and the surreal gracefully entangle. Even so, over all these poems, a patina of ruefulness presides: a regret, a longing: the world caught in the act of vanishing. -Karen Brennan, Author of The Real Enough WorldAcuity and duration of attention can indeed create a world, and that is exactly what Philip Kobylarz has accomplished with Rues. (The pun on rues is perfectly in keeping with the mischief of poetry and with the regret attendant upon all loving and urgent attention.) Every one of these poems is a world found and lost, and yet the loss is somehow always a glory, a radiance. To read this book is to travel widely and deeply. Go! -Donald RevellPhilip Kobylarz's epigrammatic poems lead us into silences. They also remind us that poetry is a tribute to Mystery. These lucid moments found in concrete and small, if not insignificant object and places, point to quiet revelations of ordinary things. By elevating ordinary moments to the level of the Silence, Kobylarz validates every small and minute detail of existence. -Ewa Chrusciel

Written with passionate precision, Florsheim's collection goes to the core of a wide range of intrigues and interests: the Holocaust, artworks, the mysteries of the everyday. Urbane and astute, his work is empathetic and clear-headed. A rich offering.-David Meltzer, author of David's Copy: The Selected Poems of David MeltzerAmong the pleasures of Stewart Florsheim's A Split Second of Light are his incisive character portraits of parents and family and the dramatic incidents he conjures out of paintings by Caillebotte, Chardin, Bonnard and others. Florsheim's gift for scene-setting and succinct phrasing, and his eye for revealing detail, make this a rewarding collection. -Chana Bloch, author of Blood Honey and translator of Yehuda Amichai and other Israeli poetsStewart Florsheim is one of those rare poets who has it all: chillingly beautiful language that draws the reader into myriad worlds of "riveting silence" and "prayer bells"; great courage to face the darkness, and the strength and wisdom to see that death and life are inextricably intertwined. This is an extraordinary book.-Louise Nayer, author of Burned: A MemoirIn A Split Second of Light, Stewart Florsheim offers insights into the quiet world of a poet born into a family of Holocaust survivors. And here we find poems that speak softly and carefully about the poet's childhood, about his growing up and traveling the world, about the imagined lives of the people inside the great works of art. Here we find a quiet, powerful book of poems grounded in the reality of a Jewish family, in the world that was handed down, father to son, "See, this is how you carve a steak/. . . His cleaver glided easily/ across lines of gristle/ then he handed me the filet/ blood dripping/ from his hand into mine." -Charles Entrekin, author of Listening: New and Selected WorkThis elegiac verse chronicles love in its sensitive idolizations yet astute analysis of having family impacted dearly by the Holocaust. These poems are a testimony of hope rooted in faith with both their hands linked. These poems call out names in syllables that ring, turning them into what those who people the pages were, beautiful and strong. In these poems, nothing of what is said can disappear unnoticed.-Andrena Zawinski, Features Editor, PoetryMagazine.com and PEN award winner for Something About.

Philip Dacey is the author of eleven previous books of poetry, most recently Mosquito Operas: New and Selected Short Poems (Rain Mountain Press, 2010) and Vertebrae Rosaries: 50 Sonnets (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009). The winner of three Pushcart Prizes, he has written entire collections about Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Eakins, and New York City. His other awards include a Discovery Award from the New York YM-YWHA's Poetry Center and various fellowships (a Fulbright to Yugoslavia, a Woodrow Wilson to Stanford, and two in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts). His work has appeared in such leading periodicals as The Nation, Hudson Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, The New York Times, American Review, The American Poetry Review, and The Georgia Review. With David Jauss, he co-edited Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms (Harper & Row, 1986). After an eight-year post-retirement adventure as a resident of Manhattan's Upper West Side, he returned in 2012 to Minnesota, where he taught for 35 years at Southwest Minnesota State University, in Marshall, to live in Minneapolis in the Lakes District with his partner, Alixa Doom. Philip Dacey is the author of eleven previous books of poetry, most recently Mosquito Operas: New and Selected Short Poems (Rain Mountain Press, 2010) and Vertebrae Rosaries: 50 Sonnets (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009). The winner of three Pushcart Prizes, he has written entire collections about Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Eakins, and New York City. His other awards include a Discovery Award from the New York YM-YWHA's Poetry Center and various fellowships (a Fulbright to Yugoslavia, a Woodrow Wilson to Stanford, and two in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts). Praise for Previous Books by Philip Dacey:Lovers of poetry, of fine turns of language, of amazing knots tied and untied, will appreciate Dacey's poems. Their strength is in the voice, the casual, comfortable speaker, whether Whitman, Hopkins, Gauguin, or the men and women of middle America. The authenticity, the humor, the intelligence-in verse, free or chained-you can't ask for more. -Louis McKee When he is serious, Philip Dacey isn't daunting, and when he is humorous he isn't silly, rather bringing to his work a mixture of learning and a deft touch with language. These poems are, in a word, suave. -David Chorlton Philip Dacey continues to do what he's done for years: keep kicking what passes for contemporary American poetry in the ass by way of reminding it of its wondrous possibilities, if, as my grandmother used to say, we would care to be possessed of all our faculties when we write it. -Bruce Cutler