WARD: Poems (The TRP Chapbook Series)
Description
The Rumpus, in a review of his work, labeled poet Ryan Vine “a raconteur,” and his superior story-telling skills are on full display in WARD. The poems are witty, teeming with dark humor, political, playful, and the sardonic tone is pitch-perfect for our times, when we seem to have forgotten that an important survival strategy is the ability to laugh at ourselves.
In its heart of hearts, WARD is a book about ethos and mythos, about the creation of a character and the investigation of voice. As one critic, Taylor Collier, wrote: “In the tradition of Kees’s Crusoe poems, Berryman’s Henry poems, and to some degree Yeats’s Crazy Jane poems, [Vine] builds a series of poems around a central character as a means of investigating both interior and exterior contemporary realities.”
The TRP Chapbook Series
Praise for WARD: Poems (The TRP Chapbook Series)
“In the traditions of John Berryman’s Dream Songs and Weldon Kees’ portraits of Robinson, Ryan Vine brings us WARD, a tragi-comedic marvel of the lyric/narrative species. Vine’s character Ward has a unique, sardonic take on self-examination—nor does he spare others his laser-like critique. The poet unifies these poems of varying lengths and structures by making them muscularly musical. And the pacing is tight as a steel trap. Vine’s metaphors can startle and thrill, as when in “Good Ward Hunting” he brings Thomas Wyatt’s erotic images up to the minute in a figure of wounded love. Whether Ward is trapped in a cellphone’s “anti-light” or dismal workplace exchange, these poems make us feel for Vine’s vivid character and, by art’s alchemical extensions, for ourselves.”
—Kathleen Winter
“WARD is a wonder, a consuming personality conjured through crisp imagery and deft humor. Poetic persona or alter-ego? Who cares? Ward is as real as a bruise, and as I read these poems, he stumbled into and through me.”
—Matt Rasmussen
“In this new chapbook, Ryan Vine charts a course through the enchanting, infuriating modes and mores that construct life in contemporary America: corporate consultation and short-order cooking, short-lived orgies and long-regretted decisions. Imaginative and fresh, WARD is a work of self-discovery.”
—J. P. Grasser
