Never before, in the history of poetry, has a poet released ten books at once. Until now: Peter Waldor has partnered with Kelsay Books, a leading independent poetry press, to roll out new collections spanning a range of subjects, including how humans relate to and understand each other, our experience of nature, travel, romance, spirituality, identity and more. Of course, quantity and quality have never been related, but Waldor shapes them into synonyms in these striking books. They make a veritable and indispensable mini-library.

Waldor has previously published fourteen books of poetry and a book of essays with an array of poetry publishers, including Alice James Books, Settlement House and Shanti Arts. Though he is mostly a hidden treasure of American poetry, he won the National Jewish Book Award, an Academy of American Poetry Award, the Alice James Books Kinereth Gensler Award and served as the San Miguel County Poet Laureate in Colorado.

Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Dugan praised the “wit, depth, clarity and intelligence” behind Peter Waldor’s poems. National Book Award winners Jean Valentine and Gerald Stern described Waldor’s work as “combining the unaffected, wise, intimate tone of the old Asian masters, sometimes joyful, sometimes heartbroken, often affectionate, with a tone of his own, a 21st century, ‘first world’ voice, more jaunty and optimistic-seeming, yet sometimes struggling for breath.” (Valentine) and “It’s such a delight when something catches you by surprise and makes you read on – and on. So it is with Waldor, a superb lyric, gnomic and gnostic poet.” (Stern) According to Publishers Weekly, “Peter Waldor’s spare irony sometimes tender, sometimes bawdy deals in dichotomies: love and hate, frailty and strength, fear and faith. These elliptical and colloquial lyrics draw equally from parable, prayer, and elegy. Hesitating on the threshold between isolation and community, the poet focuses a distortingly accurate microscope on what matters in our lives.”

With evocative titles —from the dreamlike wilderness frolics in Fairy Slippers, to the speaker’s meditations on tender moments and fraught experiences in Understandings and Misunderstandings—each collection represents an expression of vulnerability in pursuit of human connection. At The Next Table is a political polemic and travel diary–turned poetry collection. Time Can’t Tell It's Being Told: 99 Sayings, supplies either wisdom or anti-wisdom. Lover You Alone Know, Beginning Polyamory and Fourteen Meditation Prompts and a Treatise on Noble Silence speak for themselves. Each of the ten books contains a distinct exploration of themes that resonate deeply with Waldor’s signature style.

Waldor’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, the American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, Tikkun, West Branch, Mudlark, Potomac Review, Margie, Negative Capability, Chiron, BlazeVox, Fungi Magazine, Mothering Magazine, Verse Daily and Poetry Daily, among others. The January-and-rolling publication of these ten books marks a significant milestone in Peter Waldor’s illustrious career as a poet. 

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