JOSEPH RICHEY

RIDING THE BIG EARTH
THE NATIONAL POETRY FOUNDATION
1987 64 pages $2.50 Paper
ISBN 0-915032-89-9

Joe was born in 1931 in Douglas, Arizona. In high school he received All-Conference honors as a football quarterback, and was named All-Conference, All-State, and All-American in basketball. He set a state scoring record of 41 points during the Arizona State High School Tournament.

At BYU, Joe participated in two NIT Basketball Tournaments - with the 1950 team and with the championship team of 1951. He also participated in the 1951 NCAA Tournament, the East-West All-Star Game, the Dixie Classic, and the AAU Championship Tournament in Denver, Colorado.

Joe was named to the All-Conference team during his junior and senior years and led the team in scoring. As a senior, he was named to the All-American Basketball second team, Look’s All-American first team, Collier’s’s All-American second team, and the District Seven team.

Joe received his B.S. degree from BYU in 1958

Introducing Joseph Richey's Riding the Big
Earth (Orono: University of Maine, 1986), Allen Ginsberg wrote:

Combining elements that are essential for a poet -
political and spiritual activism, while having studied
subtle Buddhist theory along side Imagist technique,
objectivist poetry, surrealism, people's poetry movements,
familiar with international poetry, classical forms,
especially with sonnet and haiku, student and personal
acquaintence with a good deal of contemporaries, Anne
Waldman, Robert Creeley, myself, others in Boulder, New
Jersey, New York, New England wait for this book.

Joe has a somewhat quixotic mind, as almost all New
Jersey poets do. Another reason why I like his
cheerfulness is because it is filtered through my own New
Jersey habitat. And there are a lot of good poets coming
out of New Jersey this generation.

These poems trace the development of a young poet.
Given the tradition he is from, a kind of humility and
frankness have resulted, at the same time tender, which is
what Walt Whitman asked from American poets.

NEWARK REVIEW
http://www-ec.njit.edu/~newrev/ginsrich.html