In 2004 Star Cloud Press of Scottsdale, Arizona, published both A Sheaf of Leaves: Literary Memoirs and The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, the latest books by Lewis Turco who was the founding director of both the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, in 1962, and of the Program in Writing Arts at the State University of New York, from 1968 through 1995. He is the author of some 44 books, monographs and chapbooks including The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (1968); Awaken, Bells Falling: Poems 1959-1968 (1968); The New Book of Forms (1986); Visions and Revisions of American Poetry (winner of the Poetry Society of America's 1986 Melville Cane Award for literary criticism); The Shifting Web: New and Selected Poems (1989), The Public Poet: Five Lectures on the Art and Craft of Poetry (1991); and Emily Dickinson: Woman of Letters, Poems and Centos from Lines in Emily Dickinson's Letters (1993). He was the 1997 winner, with his Italian translator Joseph Alessia, of the first annual Bordighera Bilingual Poetry Prize for his A Book of Fears (1998); a chapbook of memoirs, Shaking the Family Tree, was published simultaneously. Mr. Turco has collaborated with various artists over the years. At S.U.N.Y. Oswego the poet collaborated first in 1966 with the printmaker Thom. Seawell in three poemprints. Their final collaboration was on a book, The Inhabitant, poems, with prints by Thom. Seawell, including the inspiration for the book a fold-out reproduction of a huge woodcut, "The House," by Seawell, both projects funded by summer Faculty Fellowships from the Research Foundation of State University of New York. The book was published by Despa Press in 1970. "While the SpiderSlept," a ballet based upon his poem "November 22, 1963," choreographed by Brian Macdonald with music by Maurice Karkoff, was performed in 1968 and subsequently by the Royal Swedish Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. With the Dutch composer Walter Hekster Lewis Turco wrote and published a chamber opera, The Fog (Donemus, 1987). Lewis Turco took the B. A. from the University of Connecticut in 1959 and the M. A. from the University of Iowa in 1962. In 1992 he received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Alumni Association of the University of Connecticut; he was inducted into the Meriden, Connecticut, Hall of Fame in 1993, and in 1999 he received the John Ciardi Award for lifetime achievement in poetry sponsored by the periodical Italian Americana and the National Italian American Foundation. In May 2000 Mr. Turco received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Ashland University in Ohio. In June 2004 he was honored with a panel and gave a reading at the West Chester University Poetry Conference in Pennsylvania where the book Lewis Turco and His Work: A Celebration, edited by Steven E. Swerdfeger, was published by Star Cloud Press. He is listed in Who's Who in America and in The Encyclopedia of American Literature among other reference works.

The Dialects of the Tribe provides an overview of the various schools of poetry that developed during the second half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. It provides insights into the methods, concerns, and poems of many of the prominent poets of the period, and a critical assessment of the development of contemporary poetic movements including the most recent, Neoformalism, which brought a return of prosodic concerns from the hinterlands of anti-intellectualism to which formal poetry had been exiled during the `fifties and `sixties, though the egocentric `seventies and into the greedy `eighties. Lewis Putnam Turco, perhaps the most respected poet-critic in the United States, is the author of more than fifty chapbooks, monographs, and books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction over more than a half-century including The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, which has been called 'The poet's bible' by several generations of American teachers and poets since its first edition in 1968 and through its fourth edition in 2011.The poet and critic James Dickey said in an unsolicited endorsement in 1986 that it 'Belongs in the hands of every poet, student, and teacher, for the greater good of the art.'

In 2004 Star Cloud Press of Scottsdale, Arizona, published both A Sheaf of Leaves: Literary Memoirs and The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, the latest books by Lewis Turco who was the founding director of both the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, in 1962, and of the Program in Writing Arts at the State University of New York, from 1968 through 1995. He is the author of some 44 books, monographs and chapbooks including The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (1968); Awaken, Bells Falling: Poems 1959-1968 (1968); The New Book of Forms (1986); Visions and Revisions of American Poetry (winner of the Poetry Society of America's 1986 Melville Cane Award for literary criticism); The Shifting Web: New and Selected Poems (1989), The Public Poet: Five Lectures on the Art and Craft of Poetry (1991); and Emily Dickinson: Woman of Letters, Poems and Centos from Lines in Emily Dickinson's Letters (1993). He was the 1997 winner, with his Italian translator Joseph Alessia, of the first annual Bordighera Bilingual Poetry Prize for his A Book of Fears (1998); a chapbook of memoirs, Shaking the Family Tree, was published simultaneously. Mr. Turco has collaborated with various artists over the years. At S.U.N.Y. Oswego the poet collaborated first in 1966 with the printmaker Thom. Seawell in three poemprints. Their final collaboration was on a book, The Inhabitant, poems, with prints by Thom. Seawell, including the inspiration for the book a fold-out reproduction of a huge woodcut, "The House," by Seawell, both projects funded by summer Faculty Fellowships from the Research Foundation of State University of New York. The book was published by Despa Press in 1970. "While the SpiderSlept," a ballet based upon his poem "November 22, 1963," choreographed by Brian Macdonald with music by Maurice Karkoff, was performed in 1968 and subsequently by the Royal Swedish Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. With the Dutch composer Walter Hekster Lewis Turco wrote and published a chamber opera, The Fog (Donemus, 1987). Lewis Turco took the B. A. from the University of Connecticut in 1959 and the M. A. from the University of Iowa in 1962. In 1992 he received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Alumni Association of the University of Connecticut; he was inducted into the Meriden, Connecticut, Hall of Fame in 1993, and in 1999 he received the John Ciardi Award for lifetime achievement in poetry sponsored by the periodical Italian Americana and the National Italian American Foundation. In May 2000 Mr. Turco received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Ashland University in Ohio. In June 2004 he was honored with a panel and gave a reading at the West Chester University Poetry Conference in Pennsylvania where the book Lewis Turco and His Work: A Celebration, edited by Steven E. Swerdfeger, was published by Star Cloud Press. He is listed in Who's Who in America and in The Encyclopedia of American Literature among other reference works.

Lewis Turco's short fiction has been appearing since 1965 in such venues as The Alaska Review, The Arts (Chicago Tribune), The Beloit Fiction Journal, The Carleton Miscellany, The Courier-Journal (New Haven), Crosscurrents, The Edge City Review (where a story won second prize in the Millennium Fiction Contest in 2002), Kansas Quarterly, The Newsday Magazine, Syracuse New Times, Northwest Magazine (The Sunday Oregonian), Picture (Minneapolis Tribune), Ploughshares, Syracuse Guide, Voices in Italian Americana, and This World (San Francisco Chronicle). Many of the stories are scheduled to appear or have appeared on-line in such ezines as Per Contra and Nights and Weekends. Turco's stories have been anthologized in American Fiction 2, edited by Michael C. White and Alan Davis for Birch Lane Press; Two Worlds Walking, edited by Diane Glancy and C. W. Truesdale for New Rivers Press, and in Heroes and Villains, edited by Henry I. Christ for AMSCO School Publications. "Vincent" was included in the first P. E. N. / N. E. A. Syndicated Fiction Project, anthologized in The Available Press / P. E. N. Short Story Collection by Ballantine Books and included in the National Public Radio series The Sound of Writing, sponsored by the P. E. N. American Center and the National Endowment for the Arts, broadcast nationally on various National Public Radio stations beginning in 1987. Although The Museum of Ordinary People is Lewis Turco's first collection of short fiction, he wrote The Book of Dialogue, considered by many to be the definitive book on writing dialogue in fiction; it has gone through several domestic and foreign editions including one translated into Italian and another that makes up atripartite U. K. volume (with Ansen Dibell and Orson Scott Card) titled How to Write a Miion, .

This is the long-awaited collection of Lewis Turco's poems, comprising a dozen books in one. Rhina P. Espaillat, poet, concludes her Foreword to the book with these words: "And how fortunate the reading public is to have this wealth of writing by one of the countrys most interesting poets now in one volume, not so much a book as a library of books, composed by the many persons who inhabit this haunted and perceptive poet! It belongs on the bookshelf of every reader willing to risk the joy and anguish of hearing the world, having it speak to him as vividly, ambiguously and honestly as it speaks to Lewis Turco."

Nonfiction. Memoir. Poetry. Essays. Italian American Studies. "Although it is true that I distanced myself from my youth, of course (everybody does), I never distanced myself from my ethnicity. I simply write poems and stories--and, of recent decades, essays and memoirs--as they occur to me, and if later on I feel that older material can be mined, transformed, or linked together to form longer works or sequences, so be it. That's what I have done in this book."

Mark Twain once said that the difference between the almost right word an the right word was the same as the difference between a lightning bug and lightning. Lewis Turco finds all of the lightning in this remarkable set of memoirs about growing up in Connecticut in the 1950s, such as a bullet "whizzing past my ear, dirling in the air" and "crashing through trees . . . snirtling and giggling," as he shares recollections of his capers and misadventures with the Fantaseers, a high school fraternity devoted to reading science fiction and fantasy and raising Cain. Ironic as it may seem, four of the hellions described herein later took religious orders, but not so for Turco, the son of an Italian Baptist minister. Instead, he became one of this nation9s foremost writers and teachers. Just as it is fascinating to attend a high school class reunion to discover what happened to one9s old friends, so too does this collection of escapades offer a scrutinizing lens into a band of rambunctious and bright youth, and the destinies that awaited them. This book is certain to stir any reader's own memories of youth's vivid haps and mishaps. For all those who love honesty, purity of language and thought as well as great story telling, buy Lewis Turco's newest collection of stories Fantaseers: A Book of Memories. The tough and tender voice of America's master poet takes us on an unflinching journey through "the mutable past." Reader, this is fair warning - and don't lend this book to any of your friends - it's such a good read, you won't get it back. -Lois Roma-Deeley, Rules of Hunger

This is the long-awaited collection of Lewis Turco's poems, comprising a dozen books in one. Rhina P. Espaillat, poet, concludes her Foreword to the book with these words: "And how fortunate the reading public is to have this wealth of writing by one of the countrys most interesting poets now in one volume, not so much a book as a library of books, composed by the many persons who inhabit this haunted and perceptive poet! It belongs on the bookshelf of every reader willing to risk the joy and anguish of hearing the world, having it speak to him as vividly, ambiguously and honestly as it speaks to Lewis Turco."

The Book of Dialogue is an invaluable resource for writers and students of narrative seeking to master the art of effective dialogue. The book will teach you how to use dialogue to lay the groundwork for events in a story, to balance dialogue with other story elements, to dramatize events through dialogue, and to strategically break up dialogue with other vital elements of your story in order to capture and hold a reader's or viewer's interest in the overall arc of the narrative. Writers will find Turco's classic an essential reference for crafting dialogue. Using dialogue to teach dialogue, Turco's chapters focus on narration, diction, speech, and genre dialogue. Through the Socratic dialogue method - invented by Plato in his dialogues outlining the teachings of Socrates - Turco provides an effective tool to teach effective discourse. He notes, "Plato wrote lies in order to tell the truth. That's what a fiction writer does and has always done". Now it's your turn.

The much-anticipated second edition of The Book of Literary Terms features new examples and terms to enhance Turco's classic guide that students and scholars have relied on over the years as a definitive resource for the definitions of the major terms, forms, and styles of literature. Chapters covering fiction, drama, nonfiction, and literary criticism and scholarship offer readers a comprehensive guide to all forms of prose and their many sub-genres. From "Utopian novel", "videotape", and "yellow journalism", to "kabuki play", "Personalism", and "Poststructuralism", this book is a valuable reference offering an extensive world of knowledge. Every teacher, student, critic, and general lover of literature should be sure to add The Book of Literary Terms to their library.

Now in its fifth edition, The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics continues to be the go-to reference and guide for students, teachers, and critics. A companion for poets from novice to master, The Book of Forms has been called "the poet's bible" for more than fifty years. Filled with both common and rarely heard of forms and prosodies, Turco's engaging style and apt examples invite writers to try their hands at exploring forms in ways that challenge and enrich their work. Revised for today's poet, the fifth edition includes the classic rules of scansion and the useful Form-Finder Index alongside new examples of terms and prose that are essential to the study of all forms of poetry and verse. As Turco writes in the introduction, "It should go without saying that the more one knows how to do, the more one can do".