His first book of poetry, The Waiting Room, was nominated for the Academy of American Poets' Lenore Marshall Prize.

Threshing Time
Twenty poems by Wayne Lanter about his association with Iowa poet James Hearst (1900-1983) and five interviews (conversations) conducted by Lanter with Hearst about poetry and writing.

His book, At Float on the Ohta-gawa, won a Mellen Poetry Press Honorable Mention for a book-length poem commemorating the destruction of the city of Hiroshima.

Canonical Hours
With their strong imagery and the immediacy of the language of everyday life, these poems become prayers and curses. These are poems used to better empathize and understand the perceptions and psyches of coal miners, farm wives, blacksmiths and of the disinherited and displaced.

New Century North American Poets

A Season of Long Taters Baseball Poems
Poems drawn from his years playing in the minor leagues for the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians' organizations.

In This House of Men

Hesitations. Pauses, momentary intersections in the flow of time, dominate this collection of poems. Hesitations includes the reflections and observations of poets, baseball players, Marines, clergy, old men and women, lovers.