Customer Reviews

Gravedigger's Birthday: Poems by BJ Ward

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

As an aspiring poet myself, I'm proud to be from New Jersey, which has a rich heritage of fine poets, from Walt Whitman to recent Pultizer-Prize winner Paul Muldoon. And there's this guy, who's blown me away every time I've heard him read his works. I've also had the pleasure of taking one of his workshops. BJ Ward writes about life from an everyguy, working-class perpsective, but with a wonderful command of language, humor and pathos. His poems range from near-heartbreaking reminiscences of a hard childhood, to poems of driving, singing along to Roy Orbison or spotting a groundhog beside the highway. These are highly accessible, but expertly crafted works, and I highly recommend this volume as well as his previous one, "17 Love Poems with No Despair". If you like Billy Collins, you'll love BJ Ward!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The other night I had to listen to BJ Ward read (he could use acting lessons) from "Gravedigger's Birthday" ... I arrived late and simply *had* to leave early. Horrendously sentimental, purple, confessional stuff with lines such as "we slept in the rotting frame of her Chevy Impala, shipwrecked on the dark shore of the Acme parking lot" -- this was not meant to be tongue-in-cheek; this was supposed to make us feel the despair of a mother (his) and her two kids (he's one of them) sleeping in her car in a parking lot one night. (And by the way, the car is not a mere rotting frame; it got them to the Acme.) The wince factor of this line is easily topped by "Above us all rose my mother's hand, dangling from the column shifter like some battle-tattered flag for independence" -- No, I'm NOT making this up, this was NOT entered in the Bulwer-Lytton Contest; he thinks this is good. And so did much of the audience. "I surveyed our survival" follows in the next stanza; apparently, Ward believes words that sound similar go together. And thanks to a quarter tank of gas, Ward's "beautiful mother" is "fully empowered" to drive that rotting frame anywhere. The misguided "young poet" who took Ward's workshop (look! alliteration!) and gave this book a good review presumably will also learn how to write such Bulwer-Lytton winners. Believe me, there were dozens of lines like the above. It's disgraceful that, apparently, Ward was given a fellowship by the New Jersey Council on the Arts and that he is now some sort of representative of New Jersey poety. In closing I should also point out that Walt Whitman was not from New Jersey as the Young Poet thinks; he's buried in Camden, but was born and raised on Long Island. Allen Ginseberg and William Carlos Williams, however, are bonafide Jersey boys.

another fine collection from BJ Ward, who manages to combine pathos and irreverence, wit and wisdom in a contemporary mode all his own.

Like several reviewers, I could not put down Gravedigger's Birthday -- I wanted to read it straight through. The harsh lambasting that Ward has endured here is unwarranted.

All I have left to say is this:

Spin & Whir, by Steve Peacock

I just want to finish reading
this poem before me--
a poem by BJ Ward--
but my eight-year-old daughter
keeps talking about her Barbie,
whose new batteries--
which she proudly replaced on her own--
now make the freakishly smiling doll's
studded flowing gown
spin and whir.

I just want to finish reading
this poem--Trash, it is titled--
but my daughter now has segued
into a Q&A about Africans--
or did she say Indians?--
who amaze her with their ability
to balance baskets on their heads
with such graceful ease.

I just want to finish reading
one page in a BJ Ward book--
Gravedigger's Birthday--
but my bright-eyed and beautiful young lady
now is testing me--
once again--
on my knowledge
of the names
of each Barbie
contained in her plastic-bag menagerie
of Barbies. It is a test I fail--
once again.

I just want to finish reading
this poem about BJ Ward's mother,
who once delivered The Star Ledger for a living,
but my little girl has taken a new blouse
out of the closet--
one of her own, not Barbie's--
and solicits my opinion of the garment.
It's very nice,
I say politely, though dishonestly,
assuming she seeks affirmation
of the shirt's fashion merits.
I think that it's stupid looking,
she says matter-of-factly.
No wonder Mommy's friend got rid of it.
She shakes her head
and returns the foul article of clothing
to the closet.

I just want to finish reading
a poem by BJ Ward,
but suddenly I gain awareness
of what a selfish prick I can be.
Placing the book of poetry
beside me on the couch,
I belatedly seek to engage my dear daughter
in a reciprocating sort of conversation,
but by this time she is preoccupied
and no longer talkative, so I pick up
a pen and paper
and attempt to write a poem
about myself reading a poem
by BJ Ward, but I can't,
because I'm a selfish prick guilty of hearing--
but not listening to--
my delightful daughter.

Her subsequent hugs
offer unspoken forgiveness--
or so I hope.

I agree with the reader from Princeton. My hope is that this book disappears into obscurity, as just another banal attempt at poetry that desires to mean something more than the poet's woes, and it isn't. I don't know who this guy thinks he is, but he isn't much, I can assure you.