A Young Poet’s Odyssey Through the Late 1960’s

The Ballad of Artz Carbuncle is the first in a projected series of four books describing the experiences and reflections of an American poet/songwriter who took the stage name Artz Carbuncle. Set in the late 1960’s, The Ballad narrates Artz’ explorations of America from his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio to Newport, Rhode Island’s famous folk festival, through a brief period of employment in New York City and a winter apartment-sitting for friends in Washington, DC.He then spends the spring as a janitor in a Cleveland chemical plant, and after being notified of his exemption from military service, undertakes a hitchhiking trip to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. His poems reflect ongoing concerns with American commercialism, popular culture, intergenerational strife, and the Vietnam War. This volume also contains as a prelude a reissue of the first book in which Artz appeared, The Collected Poems of An Anonymous Young Poet which was published as a chapbook in 1969 by the Hiram Poetry Review.

Ty Bouldin, a West Virginian by birth, majored in English at Concord College in Athens, WV between 1965 and 1969. In his senior year, he and a musician friend presented a reading of poems and songs under the stage name of “Cornpone and Carbuncle.” Most of the original material in this reading was contained in The Collected Poems of An Anonymous Young Poet. Following graduation, Ty continued writing in the interlinked narrative/lyric style of The Collected Poems, and he began developing the character of Artz Carbuncle as an artistic persona. After earning advanced degrees in English from Miami University of Ohio and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he taught English courses for 31 years at West Virginia State College and The University of Arizona in Tucson from which he retired in 2003. After retirement, he and his wife, Susan—a painter and photographer—returned to their rural home in West Virginia where they live on a wooded 25 acres with dogs, birds, flowering trees, and abundant wildlife.