When asked to submit a bio for this site, Ward thought a passable description of his life, education, and opinions on poetry could be gleaned from his answers to Andy's questions. Andy, the recipient of the following E-mails, agreed to their use in this endeavor, and indeed was an exceedingly kind and perceptive ear piece. Biographical details and publishing credits have been updated.

Dear Andy,

I would put a slight spin on Rilke's answer to why one writes poetry (Because it's necessary). No doubt it's necessary; but in fact, I'd rather call it a compulsion. I write because I'm compelled to do so. I've actually tried to avoid it for snatches of years - at least twice during my life - yet I'm always dragged back by the proverbial scruff of my neck. Something within compels me to do this thing.

One could make a simplistic argument how Nature makes pleasurable those things it requires of human beings. Ingestion, excretion, procreation - it's all necessary to move the chromosomes from one generation to the next. But does poetry fall into such a primal category? Perhaps. Consider the buzz a writer receives when the words flow, seemingly unaided at times by the writer's brain, words pounding down to the page, a torrent of insights, a flood of intuition. As if the writer steps on the power-rail of luck, thoughts magically appear on the page, and it is these rarefied moments of creativity that bring - to use a hippie phrase - a rush. And if writing is indeed a drug, then surely poetry is crack cocaine.

So then, does Nature require certain poor souls to carve out these words? I think so. There's that oft-quoted axiom that one does not choose poetry, it chooses you. Again, I think this is so. In myself, I trace it back to grade school where I discovered the magic of creating prose. There was something definitive about it . . . this was a palpable thing I did, although to dubious ends other than its own creation. Still it felt purposeful. It felt as though I needed to do this thing. And in the end, it felt good.

I do not mean to say I spent a lot of time as a child grinding away at fiction. Really such creative spurts occurred sporadically, or just enough to set the hook that would reel me in thirty-odd years later. One of these spurts popped up during my teenage years when I realized I could do this rhyming thing that Bob Dylan did, and where he did it so much better, I went through a flirtation with oddly rhyming words that fashioned a great obscurity; and just what is a subterranean homesick blues, anyway? I think I was about thirteen when I wrote my first dylanesque poems, quickly learning what a wonderful tool of rebellion poetry represented. Paul Simon, and in particular, Leonard Cohen, were much better poets, but Dylan capitalized on obscurity emanating from a key phrase. 'Like a Rolling Stone' is a catchy punchline, but what do all those verses really mean? Still there is something quite alluring about it.

As a humorous aside, I should note my parents, always suspicious of literature, sent me to a psychologist for a few months. Of the seven children and two parents in the household, none of the others had any literary interests. Looking back, I believe my parents were alarmed by these early poems, and thought I was writing quirky or even maniacal lines. I thought we all participated in the heralded Generation Gap; the therapist surprised me greatly when he mentioned it was the poetry that had landed me in his office. Incidentally, I inspected these early poems recently, and found them obscure but tame; still I do sometimes suspect my current literary agents are themselves tempted to send me off to a psychologist due to my recent crop of poems.

In high school the rift between my parents and myself expanded, and in my senior year I left home. I put myself through the rest of high school, was accepted into Penn State but my dad declined to co-sign my student loan, and at last I ended up at a community college, working full time at a department store. My brief stay at college resulted in two life-altering events.

The first concerned a poem. Enrolled in a creative writing course, I submitted various pieces as assignments, one of which the instructor brought back to me, taking me and poem to the cafeteria. There he told me I had written the perfect poem - his words, I assure you - and we began a long friendship, in a mentor/prot�g� vein. Instantly I envisioned myself as a Shelley or a Keats; pretty heady stuff. I published in the school mag, was once asked to guest lecture on DeFoe's 'Journal of the Plague Years,' and moved a co-ed to tears reading one of my poems in class, although she might have responded more to auditory pain than my lachrymose poetic vision.

The second consequential event concerned a term paper I wrote for a History of Art class. I did an interpretive treatment of five Paul Klee paintings, putting about two weeks into the project, only to have it returned with an F. Aside the grade was the instructor's warning, 'Next time don't plagiarize.' I took the paper to her, professing, of course, my innocence, but she held her ground. 'No freshman,' she pointed out, 'could write at this level, particularly about Klee.' In a way it was somewhat complimentary, and I can't say I was too incensed since righteousness was on my side. I went to my assigned councilor, thinking it would be rather easy for me to get the mark reversed. After all, I knew I was the one who wrote the paper. My councilor said I'd have to go to the college president to get rid of the F, although there was little chance of reversal, and even if I prevailed I would only then have to deal with an irate instructor the rest of the term. His advice was to swallow it, and live to fight another day.

Out at my mentor's farm, I received further disturbing counsel. 'Why sweat this . . . someone with your ability to write? In the long run, this setback is inconsequential.' None of this placated me, and I ignored all advice - much more fiery days, back then - and walked out.

I don't recommend this course of action to anyone; particularly since the higher I rose in the business community, the more this shortage of a degree has become a liability. However there is some sense in this to those who might examine the daemon of a person's life -- this rebellion and my poetry are kindred compulsions. I later discovered there were fist-loads of poets throughout history who flip-flopped out of higher education (Shakespeare, Blake, Dickinson, Shelley, Hart Crane, Poe, Whitman, Dylan Thomas, etc., etc.); and there might be some apologies made how this scratching with bone, this writing of poetry, is something that must be sharpened and cut by the poet's own hand. Techniques and the fundamentals may be taught - although not to a bone-head like me - but a poet must meet the muse on his own. No one can teach the actual affinity. It can be explained, may be described, and could even be road-mapped . . . but the consummation will only be performed by the poet. [Editor's note: Ward later in life earned his M.A. in Creative Writing.]

Anyway, off I went. I decided to write novels while working an assortment of jobs, calculating if one can write the perfect poem, why not the perfect novel? Interestingly, I wouldn't write another poem for twenty-five years (these literary misfires occurring back in 1969). Various novels, wives, and jobs all came and left in the next eight years, none of them sticking. I managed to attract a literary agent who handled three or four novels and many short stories. Together we only made two story sales (to Nugget), and had one tremendous near-miss on a novel. Playboy Press came within a hair, my agent lamented, on one of the books.

The year was 1977, and it was time to dig deeper, and simply write better. I found a job at a True Value Distribution Center, vowing I would stay with this company until I published a book. How long could that take? A few years? Five at the most? Obviously you can see the punchline coming - I'm still here; I'm beginning to sense some considerable irony to my life, but, again, I'm still here.

I began a long and successful run of working my way up in the organization, to where, today, I'm in the top fifty of a business containing 5,500 employees. I read a USNews survey last week that puts my base compensation in the top 4% of all wage-earners in America. I've been married to the same woman for fourteen years, support four daughters, and own a six thousand square foot home in the Indianapolis area. Prior to Indy, I took six other transfers with the company. Recently the architect in my division referred to be as the quintessential self-educated man. I think such a compliment is particularly cherished by a bone-head like me. I do indeed read incessantly, perhaps to compensate for the deficiency of the degree. On the humorous flipside, I interviewed with a corporate headhunter nearly a year ago, and I brought up the topic of my literary pursuits. At the time I had three publishing credits, and when he heard I had been at it for thirty years, he suggested I might be a slow learner. We both chuckled, but on reflection, I think he had a good point. Sylvia Plath soared in her late twenties - fantastic poetry - while I was nearly comatose at the same age. Here's the bio I send out with my cover letters:

"As for me, I'm a 49 year old business executive with 1,500 people in the division reporting to me. I only mention this because in a sense the daemon that propels my occupation also propels my poetry. For instance, Gertrude Stein once said, 'If Mr. Robert Frost is at all good as a poet, it is because he is a farmer -- really in his mind a farmer, I mean.'

Am I a businessman who writes poetry, or a very minor poet successful at business? Who knows? But my daemon propelled me into such a good financial position that I could now quit my business dealings and comfortably write poetry the rest of my life . . . yet I am afraid to quit for fear my daemon will leave me, or my greed will taunt me for decades.

Formerly I managed distribution centers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, Arizona and Illinois. My wife and I now live outside of Indianapolis and are currently toiling with much determination on our second crop of children, having adopted four wonderful girls and fostered several others.

Fairly new to publishing my efforts -- this most challenging of all endeavors -- I have still been fortunate to enjoy some initial successes, and have published 351 pieces since late '96. Please see the attached list of credits. Current successes are: being nominated for the 1999 Pushcart; completing an interview with Israeli poet Elisha Porat (1996 winner of the Prime Minister Prize for Literature); being accepted by Rattle for the second time; Sunstone, Porcupine Literary Magazine; the Ezines Pif, 2River View, Oblique and Offcourse; and by print magazines Potpourri and Skylark -- each for the third time. Lastly, I was selected as the Featured Poet by the Ezine Seeker, and the Canadian Ezine, Pyrowords. " [Editor's note: as of 2007, Ward published over 1700 pieces.]

The irony? The older I get, the more compulsive I'm getting about poetry, and the less successful I'm feeling about things in general. Now, money's not a bad way to measure success -- a measurement mostly espoused by people with money -- and I'm happy I'm a smidgen affluent, but I'm still restless. I am not content with this particular status in life. I'm disquieted . . . and only the creation of poetry will momentarily assuage whatever ambition drives the beast. Indeed these days I'm in the midst of a poetry torrent, writing over a hundred poems in the past year.

But I'm jumping a little ahead in this wordy bio. Four years ago I attended a two-week seminar on Human Resources at the University of Michigan. At the time I ran the HR department for True Value. I brought my laptop along and, at night, started refurbishing a novel I had written and re-written over the years. It went a lot easier than I had forecasted, and I merrily continued it as I traveled on business, in jets at thirty thousand feet. I quickly realized I was back in the buzz. Indeed the words slammed down - the torrent every writer seeks. Within six months I completed my theological science fiction, Divine Murder, then found a new agent, Jack Byrne (I learned my old one retired, although he protested that my unsaleable prose had not driven him to retirement). In the next six months I finished up the next novel - Keenly Alive, Tony -- a metaphysical romance.

In between novels, I placed a few short stories at small literary magazines, and Jack asked me to send the reprints to his partner, Larry Sternig, for re-sales. Larry later asked to represent my short stories, and he currently has fifteen or so of them. As of this writing there are two novels, fifteen stories, and a hundred poems of mine casting around America, looking to hook an empathetic or unwary editor. As I mentioned to Ms. Bischof, I am the most minor of poets; and I hope none of my musings has a deleterious effect on your own literary development.

Yet it is the poetry that amazes me the most. Of my publications, most occurred in the past two years, and the greater majority are poems. As you can see by my forwarded list of credits, these are mostly small literary magazines, with small circulations, however it's a gratifying start for someone who began all this almost thirty years ago. Another little gratification: two of the published poems were ones from my sole college year. Makes me wonder why I didn't stay with poetry back then . . . or perhaps it explains the current torrent.

To wrap up the bio, my early influences were William Blake, Sylvia Plath, Leonard Cohen, e.e. cummings, and Poe. Then I let it go for many years. Today I'm nuts about Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickenson, Robert Penn Warren and James Dickey; also I'm leaning towards Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Keats, Milton and a little bit toward Raleigh and Thomas Wyatt (did you know he had an affair with Anne Boleyn?).

The next Email will cover your questions concerning the creation of my poetry. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to think all this out and write it down. It's actually the first time I've put it on paper, and the exercise has been quite interesting, although perhaps lengthy. If I inundate you, tell me to immediately stop.

Regards,

Ward