7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brett Eugene Ralph's Astonishing Ballad for Kentucky, Youth, and You., September 9, 2009
This review is from: Black Sabbatical: Poems (Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature) (Paperback)
Brett Eugene Ralph is part of a rare breed. Rather than meander, wander, and ultimately pose an unanswerable question; Ralph draws the line, walks it, and focuses inward the grand task of addressing the world as he sees it. His themes are carefully chosen as if his decisions were the result of some kind of divine intervention; each word a vessel of its own - chiseled, cut, and hammered to fit.
His language is sharp but never unapproachable - it tears through the sloppy seams of convention and establishes, often in a single line, a broad conception with a fine point. Through his eyes, his native Kentucky is a land of disclosed mishaps.
This book is joyfully lethal.
Two veins of history, personal and learned, adopt the same blood and coerce sentiments onto the page unlike any other book of poetry I've ever read. Where other poets bring themselves so greedily centerstage, Brett Eugene Ralph proudly assumes the role of the background, the distant father, the guide. He can wear so many different masks that it is not unlikely you'll see your face stretched across his jaw, only to have him wink through the paper and offer insights that can be easily seen as fact.
The depth of his humanity comes from a down home dedication that is never forced, faked, or explained. It is a part of him, perhaps the biggest part of him: the part through which he writes meritous modern classics without a hint of insincerity.
This poetry flows like it is already dog-eared, roughed up, underlined. It's a postcard found in the glovebox of the first car you ever bought. It's memorabilia with a suggestive soul. Ralph has written a holy text that strangely functions as part-autobiography, part-philosophy, part-manifesto without the high-drawn fist. This is poetry for bus stops, for travel, for you and me from him.
The grace by which he surgically tempers his lines is blunt to the point of mastery. The lines are contagious, like the hook in a classic love song - like the hum of tires on tar or sounds of sleep.
"Black Sabbatical" carries the reader along, taking you further each time. Affecting, gut-pulling, and true. A volume you will never forget or be long without. Go on, follow him.
It's just that damn good.
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