in response to oh come on and dabman

books:


	• Gravedigger's Birthday: Poems by BJ Ward BJ Ward North Atlantic Books, 2002 - 70 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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Simply Amazing

A wonderful creative writing teacher at West Chester University brought this book to my attention. I could not put it down. His poems are amazing. It is one of those books that if you took the pages and wiped away the words, you would be left with sheets of raw emotions. I appreciate his poetry even more after hearing it at one of his readings. I can't help but find him incredibly attractive while he reads. The passion behind his work is more evident when he reads it. Overall, a must own book, and a must see reading.

On the Inspiration List

I read this book for an Introduction to Poetry Writing class and it was my favorite of the required text. Ward reaches in his writing beyond the typical poetry reader with creative and brillant descriptions of real life sitiations. I would definitely recommend this book, espeicially to new poets or contemporary poetry readers. It certainly was an inspiration for my own poetry writing.

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Inspiros Defined

This book is a true inspiration to poets everywhere. BJ Ward possesses insight and emotion that is sure to move even the most jaded of hearts. He is truly extraordinary, and the poems in "Gravediggers Birthday" are proof in print of his genius.

Missed Irony

In "Gravedigger's Birthday", Wards impressed me by repeatedly taking issues I thought I knew and cracking them open, exposing something new. From The Suicidologist, Sex with Emily Dickinson, to Upon being Asked... he looks at a diverse set of issues-family, violence, sex, roots- and succeeds in articulately pulling the profound out of the relatively mundane. But this is what excites me about any poet that I enjoy.
I found Ward distinctive because his poems gave me the feelings of peering up through the bottom of a fish bowl, instead of down into it. Starting with the cover (the pristine cake in the dirty hole), he seems to be asserting that tongue-twisting lyricism can live in the gritty and struggling places that many of the poems wind their way back to. Though many of the poems were literally about his family, its seems to me that the poems are really about snaking back to an admittedly-humble origin. I think he uses details to promote this effect, giving the abstractions time and place (in Roy Orbison, how he's on "Route 80" in New Jersey, driving his "Toyota Corolla"). Additionally, perhaps inadvertently, his repeated references to The Odyssey also suggest a long and tumultuous striving towards home.
He avoids falling into the blooming-through-the-cracked-sidewalk cliché by constantly invigorating his work with a casual, everydayness that I felt suggested reconciliation rather than voyeuristic self-interest. Perhaps its just the perspective of age, but I found that his wittiness keeps this collection of poems about fundamental human experiences original and eye-opening.
Additionally, the highly critical reviews above complete miss the diversity that Ward demonstrates in his other collections. Further, a close reading of several of his more satirical poems will undercover a ironic wit. This irony overarches this entire collection, and it is the mixture of a tumultuous past and hopeful future that enables Wards works to transcend his (occasionally uninspired) language, and makes this collection more than simply the dribble of another self-pitier.

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in response to oh come on and dabman

I'm not sure if they're idiots or cowards, or merely people with poor taste. Gravedigger's Birthday is Ward's best book. The reasons are numerous, but my favorite is that Ward has found plausible rhymes for "orange" and "purple." Who else has done that? Oh Come On and Dabman are the perfect reason to disregard anonymous reviews. They sound like the fat, arthritic slobs I hear every Tuesday morning, talking about how they would have played the football game the night before. I hear them and I contemplate the pleasures of the deaf -- the miseries of the tone-deaf.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

"In poems that both honor and transcend his blue-collar roots, BJ Ward blends poignancy and humor with downright good storytelling, and takes his place among the bright up-and-coming voices of his generation."
?Stephen Dunn, Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry