BJ Ward

Landing in New Jersey With Soft Hands

ISBN-1-55643-184-8

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"In BJ Ward's Landing in New Jersey With Soft Hands each poem is a journey fueled with discovery as we travel roads of Amercia and the heart, trusting always Ward's steady hand upon the wheel.  I love the rich diversity of poems such as "The Dying of the Light," with its insistent pathos, or the wry premise of "Shakespeare as a Waiter," and the generous elegance of "Dancing with the Teacher."  What unites this stunning debut is Ward's consistent depiction of a world filled with the anguish and promise of "something here, somthing now--that sweet something that won't grasp you or be grasped."  

                                                                   -~Edwin Romond

 

"A new voice: welcome it, BJ Ward's, with a new idion, new accents, new rhythms.  Speaking to and for a new generation, the young people of the '90s.  This is where it's at now, he says, his voice is rising above the general academic cacophone, and he's right.  Singing and squawking, it's beautiful to hear, encouraging to see."                                  

                                                                   -~Hayden Carruth

 

"BJ Ward, in his engaging first book, shows us how irreverence and reverence can be happily housed together, and even may arise from the same source. There's wit in these poems, and a storyteller's gift for apt detail.  It's a debut that promises many good things to come."  

                                                                   -~Stephen Dunn