Edited by Valerie Martin Bailey. San Antonio, TX: NFSPS, 2005. Biggest prizewinner in the book was "The Meandering Love Poem" by Sue Ranglack (Murray, UT). This anthology is available for $8.00 plus postage.

Edited by Valerie Martin Bailey. San Antonio, TX: NFSPS, 2004. Biggest prizewinner in the book was "Sunday in the House He Left" by Anne McCrady (Henderson, TX). This anthology is available for $8.00 plus postage.

Edited by Budd Powell Mahan, Dallas, TX: Great Impressions, 2003. Biggest prizewinner in the  book was "Reflection: For Li Po and Tu Fu" by Ruth F. Harrison (Waldport, OR). This anthology is available for $8.00 plus postage.

Edited by Budd Powell Mahan. Dallas, TX: Great Impressions, 2002. Biggest prizewinner in the  book was "Trimming Poison Ivy" by Pat Underwood (Colfax, IA). This anthology is available for $6.00 plus postage
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Edited by Budd Powell Mahan. Dallas, TX: Great Impressions, 2001. Biggest prizewinner in the  book was "Six Riffs on the Rain" by Jeanne Wagner (Kensington, CA). This anthology is available for $6.00 plus postage

Polly Opsahl
270 Brewster Road
Rochester Hills, MI 48309-1507

for the prices listed.  Add to the price of the book/s mailing costs of $1.50 for one or two books and add $.50 for each 2 additional books.  Make checks payable to NFSPS.  Here are the books that are available:
 

Lines from the Surgeon's Children, 1862-1865, by Rawdon Tomlinson
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2011).
$15 plus $1.50 postage if order from Polly Opsahl at the address above.  Questions may be directed to <Pollyannop@comcast.net>

 This new book, Tomlinson's third full-length collection, joins his distinguished work in Geronimo After Kas-ki-yeh (LSU Press 2007) and the prize-winning Deep Red, which won the Colorado Book Award for Poetry in 1995.  R. T. Smith, long-time editor of Shenandoah described this new volume as follows:  "Not since Andrew Hudgins's After the Lost War has a poet given us such a sustained, disturbing and dynamic portrait of men snarled in the horrors of the American Civil War.  Rawdon Tomlinson renders the pandemonium of war and its strident silences as they echo from Red River and Atlanta to Fallujah, and his soldier narrators resound with authenticity.  Like musket fire, these poems will leave your ears ringing."  The judge for the 2010 Stevens Competition, Lola Haskins, author of Desire Lines, Not Feathers Yet, and a dozen other volumes, observes that "Lines presents the experiences of the Civil War via the letters and journals of a Texas regiment . . . Tomlinson has observed his world in such convincing detail that when we close the book, we feel that . . . we must have been there."

Come In, We Open, by Sara Ries
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 2010). $15 plus $1.50 postage if ordered from Polly Opsahl at the address above. Questions may be directed to <Pollyannop@comcast.net>.

This first book by an exciting young poet draws us into the world of a diner in a working-class neighborhood and tenderly evokes its regulars--blue-collar workers, doing long hours or laid off--and its owners, the poet's grill-scraping father and manically chattering mother, who, as we learn in the first poem, bought it in 1984 partly because it was red. "Once across the threshold," writes poet Ralph Burns, "we sit down to strong coffee and such panorama that we stay and stay." Burns, former longtime editor of the literary magazine Crazyhorse, selected Ries's manuscript as winner of the 2009 Stevens Competition. "This collection," he says in his foreword, "demands that we value differently what seems quotidian, remain curious, suspend disbelief a few moments longer." Jim Daniels, famed for his own working class poems gathered in many volumes, praises Sara Ries: "She writes with a complete lack of pretense, with a straightforward, authoritative voice that reveals the truth in the small daily details and exchanges of the diner."

Lawson Fusao Inada said of this book, "Harvest is a compelling volume of authentic verse.  Each poem is rooted in the land. . . . The harvest is a blessing and a revelation."
 

Peter Meinke calls this book "more than a collection of poems. This is a complete book with a mature vision expressed with passion, wit, and lyrical intensity." He adds that the poems in the book are "clear-eyed and generous."
 

Although Eleanor Swanson's book centers on the life and work of Madame Curie, the relevance of this cycle of poems to issues of our time is clear. Ellen Bass finds Swanson's graceful poems urgently applicable to us because of Curie's "fierce devotion to science" regardless of "unforseeable consequences." Roald Hoffman calls this collection "touching," capable of moving readers to feel for and with Curie, who comes alive in these poems.
 

Poems by Jane Bailey, a registered nurse, have been accepted for publication in many journals. She has also won several awards, including the Richard Hugo Prize, the C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship, and the Stevens Manuscript Competition for 2001. She lives in Salem, Oregon. Christopher Howell calls Bailey's The Fine Art of Postponement "a wonderful debut volume" marked by "a freshness of voice and a penetrating honesty." He adds that "our daily routines, affection, sexuality, loss, memory, and absurdity are observed and rendered . . . with a skill that lets us feel it is our own."

This "moving and remarkable book," as Peter Meinke calls it, won the Stevens Manuscript Competition for 2001. Michael Dennis Brown wrote of it, "Freshness and subtlety are everywhere." Glancy, a professor at Macalester College, has published several novels and collections of essays as well as poetry. She has also received many awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. These poems add substantively to her already impressive body of work.

SINGING IN THE KEY OF L by Barbara Nightingale 
(Rochester Hills, MI: NFSPS Press, 1999), $3.00 plus postage

Of this book which won the Stevens Manuscript Competition for 1999, Lola Haskins wrote, "In this stunning collection, Nightingale succeeds in doing what poets are supposed to do.  She assimilates the data of the physical world and transmits it into higher realms of awareness. . . . We recognize her truth, and it illuminates our own experience."
 

WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES by Alan Birkelbach 
(Austin, TX: Plainview Press), $3.00 plus postage

 Margo LaGattuta said of this poet, winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition for 1998: "A unique and original voice, Birkelbach invites us into his world of surprises.  He balances the unexpected with the everyday, questioning with revelation.  His wit and wisdom shine through these poems."

SHADOWLESS FLIGHT by Todd Palmer 
(Deerfield, IL: Lake Shore Publishing,1997), $3.00 plus postage

 Todd Palmer, whose poems won the Stevens Manuscript Competition for 1997, was called by Anne Marx "a contemporary voice dealing with ageless themes," and Marx went on to say, "His virtue, in contrast to authors of similar settings, is clearness rather than obscurity, a steady illumination rather than fireworks. He knows what is real and his poetry is nourished by such knowledge."

I HAVE LEARNED FIVE THINGS by Elaine Christensen 
(Deerfield, IL: Lake Shore Publishing, 1996), $3.00 plus postage

 Of Elaine Christensen, poet whose work won the Stevens Manuscript Competition for 1996, Michael Dennis Browne wrote, "This poet speaks to us, with natural fluency and sureness of tone, from the center of a vigorously lived life full humanity, her frailties and strengths inextricably combined.  It's a joy to discover these stirring poems."

A COMMON LANGUAGE by Kathryn Clement
(Deerfield, IL: Lake Shore Publishing, 1995), $3.00 plus postage

David Baker says of Kathryn Clement's A Common Language, "The craft of these poems--their tight lines and right stanzas--seems unforced and natural . . . . Kathryn has woven for us a delicate but durable cloth for the cold days ahead."

The books which won the competition in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002 may be ordered for $3.00 per book plus $.70 postage and handling. The books which won the competition for earlier years may be ordered for a donation of at least $1.00 per book to cover postage and handling. Make your check or money order to NFSPS and order from

N. Colwell Snell
P. O. Box 520698
Salt Lake City,  UT 84152-0698

FLOODPLAIN
by Heather Hadley

ON THE HINGE
by Jory M. Mickelson

FIGHTING NATURE
by Hannah New

SEDIMENTS
by Mirra Evans

NIGHT IS A GOOD CHILD
by David Krump

RUNNING IN PLACE
by Sue Ranglack

SONGS FROM THE SPRINGHOUSE
by Rebecca Rossiter

LIFE SCIENCE
by Marianne Klekacz

INTERVALS IN LIFE
by Christina M. Flaugher

ETERNAL SOUL 
by Amenda J. Brown 

SALIDA LA MARIPOSA 
by Michelle J. Martinez
(Currently out of print)

SHE OF ME 
by Lesa Allison

CROSSING
by Garth Greenwell

AND IT WILL BE EDEN 
by Joan Malerba-Foran

FROM THE PROVINCE OF GRATITUDE
by Ilya Kaminsky

WHITE CLIFFS
by Cynthia J. Webecke

SO BRIEF A FIELD
by Caroline J. Pittman

SELAH
by Joseph A. Fitzpatrick

MORNING BREAD
by Deborah Mallett Spanich

THE LITANY OF FAREWELLS
by Amy Motlagh

LEAPING FROM THE BOTTOM STEP
by Jodi Mancastraoppa

PEOPLE THESE ARE ROOTS
by Christopher Arigo

BEARING WITNESS
by Mary E. Bryant