Customer Reviews (7)

Haunting and beautiful
In this slender volume, justly hailed as a wonder by several reviewers, Judy Jordan crafts the most beautiful, thought-provoking and elegiac poetry out of the less promising circumstances - poverty, alcoholism, murder and death - and gives us lines we aren't likely to forget.

I came upon this book by pure chance, and I'm happy I did. Despite her often dismal subject matter, Judy Jordan is a joy to read. Get the book now, thank me later!

Fantastic.
Judy Jordan, Carolina Ghost Woods (Louisiana State University Press, 2000)

Judy Jordan writes dense, exquisite poems that both shock and satisfy, while making you feel vaguely like taking a shower afterwards.

"...it informs the toads,
crouches them in crooked caves of alder roots,
pulses the pale skin under their slack mouths,
keeps them in the pond's tight waves clutching anything:
a pine's resinous knot, a fist of chair foam,
even a drowned and legless female."
("Long Drop to Black Water")

I loved this book; very easy to see why it won the National Book Critics' Circle Awards, though I have to admit I'm somewhat surprised that they received such heavy subject matter with such aplomb. This one's definitely a keeper. ****

Carolina Ghost Woods
I pulled Judy Jordan's "Carolina Ghost Woods" off my bookshelf again tonight. It's a cold and clear here in the deep south and Jordan's poetry called to me in the wind. "Carolina Ghost Woods" was first published in 1996 by Louisiana State University Press, and Jordan writes that she submitted this book for three years as a "first book" before it was awarded the Walt Whitman Award in 1999.The first poem, "Sharecropper's Grave" sets the tone:

The night is hoot owls, wind-whistled flue, babies bundled in burlap.
Breath of another child, mid-gasp.

The alliteration causes the reader to shiver in the cold and continues throughout this poem:

Small holes, secret graves,
children scattered around the iron fence.
Not even a scratched stone. . .
The night full of cries they will never make.
To read the title poem,"Carolina Ghost Woods" is to travel into the mythos of the south, to hear what the dead whisper,
When the leaves shudder to the muddy ground
and snow under the gutters puddles red,
when the bird lifts, the rabbit shivers in clumped grass
and the fox shrinks into the bramble,
when the shadow crosses the pitchfork's broken handle
and the hinges of the shed door rust,
let me believe someone is there.

Each poem in the book reveals another story from Judy Jordan's life. They are woven together to bring the reader through the death of her mother and the violence of being on the streets, homeless. Ms. Jordan joins the reader in this journey with her breath and voice and we walk the ghost woods together.

Buy the book and settle down with a fire in the fireplace and the lights dim, read "Caroline Ghost Woods" from start to finish . . . you won't regret it.

"Ghost Woods": Craft, Soul and a Dark Past
As a creative writing student at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale I was immediately fascinated with the program's newest addition. Already the school boasted the great Rodney Jones. And I began reading SIUC's newest professor/poet Judy Jordan. After several readings, I am still amazed. Whether it be the remarkable, pain-staking craft or the soul-drenching childhood and early adulthood that she narrates with such originality and heart-thrashing grief, Jordan simply takes your breath away.

This collection, unbelievably a debut, doesn't just grip the reader with it's wrenching family tragedies. The music, sounds, carefully sought words (both for sound, connotation and meaning) and an ambition leaning towards the transcendent makes for a potent statement.

Currently, I am enrolled in a poetry course with Ms. Jordan. Let this not be a bias in my review. I admit am unabashedly biased towards male poets. For whatever reason, I can see through the eyes of a Rodney Jones or a James Wright easier. However, Jordan's book truly strikes a chord with me. It doesn't beg for pity. It doesn't make the predictable turns. It endeavors for something more. In addition to pain, guilt and embarassment, it finds joy, hope and transcendence in this person's impoverished, tragic past. It bears minor resemblances to the work of her former teacher, Charles Wright, as well as carrying influences of poets she's worked around in the past: namely James Kimbrell and Donald Platt. But as their style is of their own, so is hers'. And Jordan's ability at true poetic craft, rhapsodic forms and ear for human dilemma is more than original, it is ground-breaking.

During a time when poetry's popularity is at an all-time low, fresh work from the likes of Jordan and Kimbrell are keeping the medium alive. There is something very spiritual in this movement. I only hope, that when my time comes, I can be a part of it.

Impressive Book
While it's true that Jordan's technique seems a bit thick with "borrowings" from Charles Wright, her actual material (and her treatment of it) is wildly original. This book is shocking, heart-wrenching and, at times, almost unbearably beautiful. An urgent and necessary voice. ... Read more

Product Description
Following her critically acclaimed first book of poetry, Carolina Ghost Woods, Judy Jordan here returns to a time in her life when she was homeless and working as a pizza deliverer at a Greek immigrant–owned restaurant. She absorbs the life experiences and unmet dreams of her coworkers, the parking lot prostitutes, and the other homeless with whom she shares coffee refills and the warmth of the bus station terminal. Their voices, along with Jordan’s, come together in a haunting chorus that bears witness to the misery of poverty in the richest country in the world.

Childhood abuse, drug use, violence, disease, and war enter into many of the stories that form this collective tale. Sometimes broken and eerie, sometimes lyrical and beautiful, and other times quirkily humorous, the poems gain an added edginess by the use of fixed forms and the re-imagining of the sonnet in the mouths of the twentieth century’s wounded and alienated. Ultimately, Jordan explores the place of beauty, verse, and narrative in helping to move us into a future in which everyone’s story is told.

Tell me Chris are there nights long after the sun’s
yolk has broken across the mountains’ blue ridge
when time becomes so bold it crawls its way
from hibernation and shimmies naked
and shivering to the trees’ highest branches,
when the river weeps so loud and long
the fish choke on their own old sorrows,
when the wild onions close their eyes one by one
and the Queen Anne’s Lace fold up
their blood-spotted handkerchiefs
and lie down in ditch weed and sorrel the final time,
nights when the steel band of your ribs tightens
and your hands go cold, nights when you know
you will never see Greece again. Never. ... Read more

Product Description
'Life is a journey,and so is end of life and we can prepare for it in the same way as we would prepare for any journey, making sure that all loose ends are tied up'

Once a taboo subject,end of life is becoming a 'red-hot' topic as more people realize that the care and arrangements for their own end of life are in their own hands.In addition,new government initiatives in respect of carers and caring and of dementia care are bringing the subject to the fore.

This essential guide for carers,be they professional or friends and relations,provides information across a range of concerns surrounding end of life.The book tackles this difficult subject in a practical and caring way,showing how appropriate arrangements can be made to ensure the dying person's wishes about dying and post-death (funerals or celebrations of life and mourning ceremonies) are carried out.From the practical point of view,the book covers making a Will,making an Advance Directive,donating body tissue and organs and giving directions for ones own funeral or life celebration and/or memorial service.From an emotional view point the book discusses grief including anticipatory grief, ways of coping with grief,and the importance of grieving.

While invaluable for general readers facing these difficult issues,the book will be of specific interest to carers in residential/nursing homes and in hospitals together with counsellors,palliative care workers and teachers and students on courses in Health and Social Care and Nursing.

Hammersmith Press is an independent publishing house producing books for the general public and health professionals that promote better health and well-being through a greater understanding of the human body and mind, with a particular emphasis on the importance of nutrition and diet.

Some of the areas we publish in include:

-Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP)
-Overcoming Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
-Natural Health & Weight Loss
-Holistic Medicine
-Thyroid Health
-Medical stories
- Healthy eating
-Traditional medicines
-Infertility
-Menopause
-Diabetes ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Judy Jordan, Charles Fanning, Allison Joseph, Shekhar Chaudhuri, Lucia Perillo, J. Kevin Dorsey, John Henry Baker. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 28. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Judy Jordan (b. 1961 ) is an American poet. She grew up on a small farm near the Carolina border. Her parents were sharecroppers, and she was picking cotton by the time she was 5. She was the first member of her family to attend college, with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in 1990, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1995. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree, in fiction from the University of Utah, in 2000. She lived in Salt Lake City. She taught at the University of Virginia, Piedmont Virginia Community College, and California State University, San Marcos. She teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She lives off-the-grid in a cabin that she built herself in the Shawnee National Forest, and is working on a non-fiction book about her experiences there. Her poems have appeared in Raintaxi, Blue Pitcher Review, Crossroads: A Journal of Southern Culture, Lucid Oona, Poetry, Western Humanities Review, and Writers Eye. Judy Jordan's book, Carolina Ghost Woods, is a startling first collection of poems--startling because of the bone-crushing violence and poverty, and startling also because of the beautiful and precise language the poet brings to bear on these scenes, violent or not. She is a poet first and foremost. Judy Jordan has written a stunning collection in Carolina Ghost Woods, winner of the 1999 Walt Whitman Prize. Graced with an engagement of the senses that is so precise it seems otherworldly, Jordan renders the landscape of her childhood with a stylistic and thematic unity that is rare for a first book of poems. 60 Cent Coffee, Jordans second volum...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=23236472 ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 1053. ... Read more

Product Description
Written in a lucid, down-to-earth manner, Short Cuts on Wine discusses what to look for in the labeling of wine, the differences between regional appellations and varietals, the methods of winemaking--including champagnes, fortified wines, and late harvest wines--the benefits of aging wine, and how to rate wine at tastings. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Wines & Vines, published by Hiaring Company on December 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1845 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The sparking Judy Jordan.
Author: Larry Walker
Publication: Wines & Vines (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2002
Publisher: Hiaring Company
Volume: 83Issue: 12Page: 24(4)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more