The most undeservedly unsung poet in all of English-Canadian literature is Frederick Ward.1 Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1937, he is African-American in heritage and an expert partisan of many arts. Ward studied art at the University of Kansas and music at the University of Missouri. He learned jazz piano under the tutelage of Oscar Peterson. After slinging words as a Hollywood songwriter, Ward moved to New Mexico where he published his first book, a collection of poems in 1964. In 1966 in Detroit an edited anthology of nine Baha’i poets appeared. This anthology included his own work and the work of his great influence and inspiration, the masterful African-American, Afro-modernist poet: Robert Hayden(1913-80). -Ron Price with thanks to George Elliott Clarke: (a) “Frederick Ward’s blistering blues – Excerpt,” in Arc Poetry Magazine, 7 August 2009 and (b) The Anne Szumigalski Memorial Lecture in Prairie Fire, Vol 29 No 4, winter 2005/6.
I never heard of you, Frederick,
starting life, as you did, right at
the start of that great Plan in ’37.
Elliott says critics do not know
how to read your polyventiality:
your multiple tones and multiple
rhythms, multiple perspectives,
multiple meanings, multiplicity.
You use improvisation, linguistic
heterogeneity, redescribing and
cultivating human & emotional
complexity, dignity, humanistic,
musical poetic and non-standard
rhythm, openness....unintelligible
speech--called scat--& metaphors
borrowed from ceremonies—and
this making you one of those jazz
poets, attempting to mimic and to
orchestrate—words all those very
discordant stimulating conjunctions
and that rhythmic jazz drive offering.
Your anthology Nine Baha’i Poets,
appeared in 1966 just as I was on
my way to the Canadian Arctic and
this edited anthology included your
own verse and that of splendid poet
Robert Hayden whose work with a
gorgeous imagery, ecstatic and its
symphonic lyricism and a homage
to black culture. In ’68 you landed
in Detroit after watching that city in
the summer of ’67 burn and by then
I was on Baffin Island--I never knew
you, Frederick, especially with Inuit
life, bipolar disorder, my Antipodean
travels, wall-to-wall classrooms and a
Bahá'í community life which kept my
nose to the proverbial grindstone.......
Frederick: coming out of obscurity?
Ron Price
4 September 2009
Do you know any Baha'is who are poets?
Comments
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A prose-poem by Ron Price
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A CAREER
Michael Jackson's memorial service was broadcast live on every major American network television station yesterday on 7 July 2009. It was the largest gathering for a deceased person in world history. In Australia there had been a TV special: “Michael Jackson--The King of Pop” which premiered on June 27 at 7.30pm. It was replayed at 1:30 in the morning on 8 July 2009. I watched about ten minutes of this program before going to bed last night. After midnight I usually watch a little TV as a sort of sedative to help me sleep. Given the immense publicity surrounding Jackson since his death on 25 June two weeks ago, I felt the need, the desire, to write this prose-poem.
Several critics have observed that Jackson’s songs were crafted from combinations of: funk, disco-pop, soul, soft rock, jazz and pop ballads. Jackson was born when I was 14, the year before I joined the Bahá'í Faith. He sang from middle childhood, from the 1960s when I was in my teens in Canada. One writer summed up Jackson’s vocalist style as one which possessed: the grace, the aggression, the growling, the natural boyishness, the falsetto, the smoothness—a style which possessed a combination of elements to mark him as one of our era’s major vocalists. The sale of over 750 million records worldwide made him the world's best selling male solo pop artist.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 8 July 2009.
An unstoppable juggernaut,
instantly identifiable voice,
eye-popping dance moves,
stunning musical versatility
and loads of sheer star power.
The hottest single phenomenon
since Elvis Presley......the most
popular artist in show business
history, a part of popular culture
since my pioneering life began...
on Canada’s homefront &, yes...
in Australia...some call him: a....
genius and others a man with a...
Peter Pan syndrome---a term in...
pop-psychology used to describe
an adult who is socially immature
who never grew up...one of many
ways to describe Jackson, one of
many descriptions I have heard in
the last fourteen days before which
I hardly knew the man at all...sadly.
Ron Price
8 July 2009
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I'd give this prose-poem a B+(74%)
I know one Bahai who is a poet. He is Ron Price in Tasmania. He has been writing poetry from 1959 to 2009. He publishes on the internet.
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