Jesse Ball is an American poet. He was born in 1978 in Port Jefferson, New York.

Ball achieved a BA from Vassar College and a MFA from Columbia University. He was a student of Professor Richard Howard of Columbia University. Howard immediately took a strong interest in the career and future success of Mr. Ball, helping the then 24 year old poet to publish the book, March Book, with the publisher Grove Press . At Vassar, Ball studied with such notable poets as Eamon Grennan and Paul Kane. At Columbia, he worked with Lucie Brock-Broido , Liam Rector , Glyn Maxwell, Nicholas Christopher , Edward Hirsch and Timothy Donnelly .

Ball's late childhood was marked by tragedy. The early deaths of his father, Robert, and brother, Abram, haunt his work. He has rarely settled in one place, moving instead between Majorca, Poughkeepsie, New York, Boston, Santa Fe, Reykjavik, Long Island, and Pau (FR).

As Glyn Maxwell wrote, "Jesse Ball's work may bear some of the markings of the contemporary postmodern--its opacity, its scattershot wit--but on inspection forms into something richer and stranger: a coherent and authoritative voice from somewhere hard to place, some forgotten country way upstate, whose poets drift into view like storms--fresh, insistent, daunting, worth waiting for."

Ball's poetry has appeared in The New Republic, Circumference, Oberon, and Agenda (UK). His work is scheduled to appear in The Paris Review, The Boston Review , and Denver Quarterly . His writing is distinguished by an oblique address that is at once absurd and deeply serious, mordant and curiously playful.

Here is an autobiographical note presumably written by Jesse Ball, taken from his informational website:

Ball, Jesse. 1978- . American poet, ne'erdowell, b. Suffolk County, New York. Tutor to delinquents, croupier, freelance writer, chess player. His published works include the verse volume "March Book" (2004).First artistic success was the short film "Chair 4/02," the which was shown in the Deluxe Gallery in London in an exhibition, summer 2002. Ball's first contact with nobility was when as a four year old boy he sent a letter to Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II. His missive, a series of monster sketches, merited a response from the Queen. Thus, history considers Her his first patron. A parasomniac, obsessed with sleep and dreams, Ball was known to have stayed awake for up to 129 hours at a time.

Works

Poetry

• the primacy of the imagination (2004)
• Afterwards, but also before (2004)
• 2.0 East Riding (2004)
• THOUGH I AM HATED BY ALL BIRDS (2004)
• parables and lies (2003)
• March Book (2003)
• LIGHT HUNG OVER THE BOARD (2002)
• Lullabies For a Grounded Zeppelin (2001)
• The Holding Company (2001)
• World's Fair 7 June 1978 (2001)
• Studies no. 1-50 (2001)
• Equations (2000)
• Comrade! Brother! (1999)
• Precaution (1998)

Prose

• amokbook (2005)

External links

• The official website of Jesse Ball.
• Claire Nicholas White's review (PDF)
• DeSales Harrison's review in Boston Review
• Academy of American Poets: "Inside the Stove" by Jesse Ball
• Interlude: A Wager
• Nyhil: Translation: Inside the Stove