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MUSIC
A native of Georgia, USA, L. Ward Abel began as a poet, but was soon in the Jacob Rye Band playing extensively around Georgia during the mid to late 1970’s, including stints at Atlanta’s Electric Ballroom (a.k.a. The Agora) and the Fox Theatre/Egyptian Ballroom, performing what would be labeled as original “progressive” or “art” rock, along with some cover music. Upon JRB’s dissolution, he formed Preface, which released two singles in England in the early 1980’s under the Bumticker Music (UK) label and was played on the BBC. Preface actually lived in London in 1982 and recorded at Hallmark Studios while there. Peppered during this time period were undergraduate and post-graduate educational forays. In the late 1980’s, two significant happenings occurred. Ward recorded two CD’s as Max Able on the Sky Records label, one of which came close to cracking the College Top 100 (CMJ) and gaining extensive national airplay on college radio stations. In addition, he was a founding member of Scapeweavel, pioneers in the Atlanta spoken-word-with-music scene. In the early 1990’s, Scapeweavel released “The Twittering Machine,” a CD of poetry with improvisational multi-instrumental work, and “Persistence of Memory,” released in 2002. In the mid-1990’s, he rejoined former Jacob Rye member Steve Rawls to form Abel & Rawls, later renamed Abel, Rawls & Hayes (which now includes the iconic keyboardist Sloan Hayes). He released two CD’s with Rawls, along with the Abel, Rawls & Hayes CD entitled “Flash on a Film ” (2005), and has worked with the likes of Ross Childress (former Collective Soul guitarist), Joel Kosche, Will Turpin and Shane Evans of Collective Soul, and recently with Phil Ehart, drummer of Kansas, among other well known musicians. A new Abel, Rawls and Hayes CD, "The End of Rock n Roll As We know It," has just been released in 2009. |
POETRY
L. Ward Abel has been published extensively in many poetry journals both in the U.S. and in Europe, print and online, carving a niche for himself with his unique free verse that has resulted in the publication of his first chapbook Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003) and the full-length collection of poetry, Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), and the newly released The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press). Here are what others have said about Ward’s poetry:
About Peach Box and Verge:
“This chapbook by the Georgian (US) poet and musician, L.Ward Abel, is substantial. Thirty-eight poems in four sections including photographs. This is the first publication to come my way via Little Poem Press and I'm impressed.
Abel's poetry is widely published here in the UK and in his native USA and it's easy to see why. I came across this poet when he submitted poetry for the first edition of erbacce and was immediately taken by his craft.
In the opening section, Backpastures (Home ), we are treated to Abel's strengths. It is a simple language but redolent of the very best poets. In the opening poem, “Found Claydust” these lines stand out:
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‘The words were clear to the point,
even athletic to use a phrase’
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The same can be said of the poetry in this chapbook. I'm reminded of Raymond Carver’s sublime poetry, which ranks among the very best.
There is a real sense of place within these poems, not only of the poet’s immediate locale, but of the wider world in general. The locations range from London, to the cemeteries of the southern states of the US.
In “Roberta,” we are told of Roberta dragging charcoal across the headstones of a cemetery:
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‘Does she channel
with pencil
the senses
that have since
rejoined all of the dark matter around us?
What of the
moments?
[…] They fire in her genres
making stone from hint.
Such.’ |
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What I particularly like about this poem is the ease with which we are placed into its location and then almost cast aside with those wonderful lines at the poem's end.
Abel seems comfortable with allowing us into his world. “Trans-County” tells us of his fore-fathers and the land they worked and how this stands in comparison to Abel's 'so-called education': 'these many years later/hiding my real name/afraid/to shame/these hardworking men and women'.
Abel's ability and strength I feel, stands with the descriptions of his native South with its ‘pepper-waft/light inland breeze’ and its natural world from “Birdark” with its ‘Bank of starlings/pieces/torn from night’ to the rainfall of “Summersoak.”
This is a substantial collection and one which a short review cannot do justice. I was sent a review copy of this and was immediately taken with it. So much so, that I purchased an e-book version from the publisher's website. I urge you all to the same. You won't regret it. Where else can you get 47 pages of quality poetry for $3? For the traditionalists amongst you, the book is available in conventional form too.”
--Andrew Taylor, Co-Editor of erbacce (UK), and Poet.
About Jonesing For Byzantium:
“In “Asheville Morning Overlook,” Ward Abel says, ‘But only here, wordless,/only here might translation/begin.’
L. Ward Abel is rarely wordless. He confronts the world head-on, with nerve, with clear-eyed wonder, and with the tools (language, soul) to translate it into benevolent recognition. The poet engages with the world; he does not balk, he does not look away.
Jonesing for Byzantium is an opera, a drama of voice and music and beautiful words. The natural world that Ward Abel inhabits, and gives us generously, is a place of rare beauty, teetering magisterially between the sacred and the mundane.
Taken separately, each poem here is lovely, self-contained, specific, as crisp as the sound of tires on a wet, rural road, and as rooted as his Georgia kudzu. They represent the place ‘where math meets jazz.’ Taken all together, these poems are one long hymn to a universe both welcoming and befuddling. Abel’s is a voice that doesn’t just cry in the wilderness it sings.”
--Corey Mesler, author of We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon
“Ward Abel’s latest book of poetry, Jonesing for Byzantium, is a very personal peek into the mind of a poet. It is not easy to categorize Abel’s work because it does not hold with the usual categories, nor is it ‘experimental’, in that connotation. Rather than being language for the sake of language, it appears to be language used for a specific purpose—to connect and explain in myriad ways the process by which the poet experiences his universe. The reader feels pulled into the thought patterns and subjects, in an accessible, non-academic journey, and yet it is still ephemeral in some muted, secret way, so that there’s shimmer, light and shadow where the obvious might have been thrust at us. One is reminded of music with the blending of notes, the subtleties of segues, and the dream-like quality of the poet’s stance. His language is his own and it’s no-nonsense without ever getting heavy handed.
There is a sadness and yearning in some of the work that seems to reveal itself in places and nature as if the earth itself is a metaphor for man’s own hard realities. In “What Survives Out On Tar Road Corner,” it is the kudzu (a viney weed) that survives—and one finds oneself considering the ‘weeds’ of one’s own world. Abel notices things. He observes women prisoners whose van has broken down on the highway. He takes note of Richard Nixon’s quirks, and Van Gogh’s untold travels. Like a jazz riff, he blows hot and cold ‘making sense of the senseless, this ‘soul’s housing,’ the final door.’
There are wonderful surprising images too, the unexpected that delights in poetry. In “Now As Opposed to Then” Abel tells us: ‘But/I have perspective/knowing/what could come,/always in the/back corner/of a church/at the base of/my skull.’ And in “Things Left Behind,” ‘It reminds me of things left behind,/like songs and poems/when the hand/has become potting-soil.’
One of my favorite poems in this volume is “Portent the Wing.” I think it exemplifies what I am trying to describe in Abel’s work which is indescribable. And that’s what I love about this poet and his work:
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‘Birds cross my path,
and the message
they impart
hinges on their slant of skim:
a glide towards and then passing behind
is not a welcomed one, as it signifies
paying twice for territory, or a failure—
this being the only dreaded traverse;
a pass from right to left is positive,
something propitious foretold;
left to right less so, though not a malevolent
prophecy;
but the bettermost way streams forward
with me in accompaniment
clearing the trail,
I in its wake,
protected,
uplifted, kite-ish
my bones inflated,
lighter than rarified air.’ ” |
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--Beverly Jackson, poet/writer/editor/publisher of Ink Pot (literary journal) and
Lit Pot Press, Inc.
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