Welcome to the website for Scienter Press

A small press for poetry of meaning

Focusing primarily on poems having measure or form.

R. L. Barth’s New Chapbook: Ghost Story
14 pages       $7.99

R. L. Barth’s new chapbook of poems, “Ghost Story,” once again exhibits his mastery of the plain style, and his terse, uncompromising application of that mastery to the experience of war.  In the title poem, the voice is that of the “wraiths of the unburied dead,” who, though unseen, accompany a small patrol, and “prowl instead/ of lying quietly…Until found, buried, peaceful [they] go home.”  In “Tripping a Booby-trap, by the Numbers,” a badly wounded soldier’s companions try to save his life, one of them holding the wounded man’s cigarette “Until the ember ceased to glow.”  In “Short-timer: An Elegy,” Barth’s wonderful dirge for his friend and fellow Vietnam veteran, Warren Hope, the poet allows us to discover only at the poem’s end what’s happening.  Each of this book’s poems is a gem. 

R. L. Barth is the author of many books of poetry, including:  Deeply Dug In;  Battlefield Prayer;  Small Arms Fire;  Reading the Iliad;  A Soldier’s Time;  and Looking for Peace.

Poets Scienter has published include:

R.L. Barth
Mark S. Bauer
Turner Cassity
Maryann Corbett
Suzanne J. Doyle
Rhina Espaillat
Warren Hope
X. J.  Kennedy
T. S. Kerrigan
Katherine McAlpine
Ellen Stephen
Gail White
Yvor Winters

For details, see the "Titles" page.
To order, please see the "How to Buy" page.