Customer Reviews:

• "I have heard it said that the best prose sounds like poetry. Then it stands that the best poetry should flow and read as well as the finest prose (with no wasted words.) These poems are wonderfully written free verse, succinct, - each one stands alone as a chapter if not a short story about things that are not usually talked about - let alone written down. As you are reading this chapbook you will want to go back and reread some of the poems as each one sheds light on the life of Bridgeman and his relatives and acquaintances. As a whole this chapbook is really a novel in poetry form because it tells part of the story of a man's life. I highly recommend this chapbook for anyone who wants to read poetry that is not sugar coated." - d.k. fisher

• "Unfortunately, I am distracted from what is excellent poetry by the following: peculiar punctuation and capitalization, strange line breaks, outright misspellings, and apostrophes in the wrong places. Is this neglect of form intentional (for whatever reason) or did the author simply neglect to proofread? Having said that, I applaud the quality of work; this is a chapbook well worth your perusal." - Debby Cooper

• "Mr. Bridgeman approaches poetry with a tough kind of nuance. He can take love & war and discuss them in a way which can be both uncompromising & unsentimental. Much of this may have to do with the voice he employs. It is a voice that studs the vernacular with the poetic and vice versa. The undeniable reality of lines such as "the / ratchet of a pneumatic socket slipping" finds themselves balanced with such complex evocations "Purple Hearts / skewered to satin pillows, / bleeding honor." And though Randy speaks mainly from experience, his voice is not rigid, it constantly adapts itself to the subject at hand--from the blunt, everyday language of "Love Poems" which discusses the daily love of marriage to the image saturated "South of Everywhere" to the mythic meditation on war in "Abraham's Tour." Above all, what I admire most, is that these poems, for the most part, have a realness, an integrity on one hand, and, on the other, the ability to suggest the poetic complexities of their subjects. They're not afraid to be ugly and do not fail to recognize beauty." – Joe Hall

• "Relationships tell the tale, Poet distills life experiences in first published collection.

      Randolph Bridgeman took about half a lifetime to come back to his early dream of writing poetry. He remembers being intrigued by the power of writing as early as his pre-teen years, he said but received little encouragement.
      Readers of his recently released collection of poems, South of Everywhere, learn quickly some of the influences that caused him to pursue a career in the Navy instead.

      My father turned from
      his workbench, poked
      the tip of his screwdriver
      in my chest and said,
      ‘Poetry? Poetry, is for
      Faggots and lonely women,’
      And I believed him.
      -“Homecoming”

      Bridgeman dropped out of high school and spent the next 26 years in the Navy. He participated in Vietnam and Desert Storm. He traveled. He moved from the West Coast where he had grown up. He got married and raised two daughters.
      But all that time, ideas and poems were “bouncing around in his head,” Bridgeman said. And at retirement, Bridgeman decided to start out all over again and go back to that early dream, “I held on to it and just kind of pushed it sown,” he said of his desire to write.
      While working as a logistics engineer for Anteon, a Lexington Park contracting firm, Bridgeman began working toward his English degree at St. Mary’s College.
      “It took me seven years,” he said. He graduated this year. He describes the college as a hotbed for writers, “particularly for poets.” He studied under a former and current poet Laureates of Maryland-faculty members Lucille Clifton and Michael Glaser. “It was just incredible,” he said of the opportunity.
      During his senior year, Bridgeman compiled a collection of his poetry for his senior project. He started with 60 poems and distilled that down to 33 for the final collection.
      Congnard-Black, an assistant professor of English, served as his mentor.
      Congnard-Black believes that all those years of putting off his dream contributed to the depth of his current writing. He brings a “richness of experience” to his poetry, she said.
      Bridgeman said he studied narrative poets like William Wordsworth and Windell Berry to help him with his own style, which is similar.
      “Randy is very much a poet of the everyday,” Congnard-Black said. Using narrative, story-based writing, “he asks us to see the everyday again.”
      His work is very American in that it is set on both coasts of the United States. It is also universal, however, in that it covers themes that would resonate with anyone. Bridgeman’s collection begins with his observations from his early family life and the difficult relationships therein. It includes work on his early loves, people who touched his life and observations during war. The last several poems are based in St. Mary’s County, which is the inspiration for the collection’s title and one of the poems, “South of Everywhere.” These latter poems also include the 52-year-old writer’s thoughts on aging, one of his favorites. He describes his grandparents in “Junk Dealer.”

      At my grandfather’s table I drank
      Buttermilk and ate Pig’s Feet,
      Cow Tongue and Beef Hearts,
      entrails better left covered in
      the sawdust on the neighborhood
      butcher’s floor when there was
      such a thing.
      ‘The Depression had never left
      him,’
      Grandmother said as she spooned
      It up as gracefully as she had
      brought
      his children into tis world

      Bridgeman’s promise as a poet was noted at St. Mary’s where he received the Edward T. Lewis Poetry Prize in 2004 for the most promising emerging poet.
      Laurel Johnson, who reviewed “South of Everywhere” for Shadow Poetry Ink, the collection’s publisher, commented on this prize. “Randolph Bridgeman has moved beyond being a promising emerging poet. He’s emerged,” she wrote.
      Bridgeman was selected as a Lannan Fellow to the Folgers Shakespeare Theater in Washington D.C. for the 2004-3005 poetry reading series. His poems have been published in the “Avatar Literary Magazine,” Connections Literary Magazine,” “Blue Collar Review,” Adirondack Review” and the “Peoples Press Anthology.”
      He is currently at work on his second collection of poetry titled “Mechanic on Duty.”
      “This is an act of love,” he said. “It is something I’ve always wanted to do.” "- Susan Craton, Staff Writer, Enterprise Newspaper ~ Wednesday, March 23, 2005