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Richard Jones

Born: August 8, 1953 in London, England
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Richard Jones has been on the faculty at DePaul University in Chicago since 1987. He currently lives in Evanston.

Biography: Richard Jones was born in London, England and came to the United States when he was a year old. He is a notable contemporary poet and is the author of several books of poems. He is also the editor of the anthology, Poetry and Politics. In 2000, he published a compact disc, Body and Soul, in which he discusses the art of poetry. He is editor of the literary journal, Poetry East, and its many anthologies, including, The Last Believer in Words and Bliss. He is currently professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago, where he has taught since 1987.


Awards:
  • The Blessing Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry, 2000
  • Country of Air Posner Award, 1986

Primary Literary Genre(s): Non-Fiction; Poetry

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

E-Mail: rjones1@depaul.edu
Web: https://richardjonespoetry.com/
Web: https://www.poetryeast.org/
Web: http://richard-jones
Web: https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/authors/richard-jones/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jones_(poet)


Selected Titles

A Perfect Time
ISBN: 1556590687 OCLC: 30736214

Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, Wash. : ©1994.

The subjects range from coming home to find the house burglarized, to weeping over a 19th Century novel, to cooking tomato soup, to the mood of an early morning: Four in the morning in a quiet house is like a clearing in a forest, tranquil, serene, a perfect time to ask forgiveness or consider the future's empty face.

Apropos of Nothing
ISBN: 155659237X OCLC: 62084246

“Jones can be stunning, effortlessly finding the right tone. This is instinctive poetry, combining bluntness with reserve.”—The Village Voice “Richard Jones... demonstrates an ability both to transform into affirmation the tragedies of personal experience and to extract from them a more universal truth.”—Library Journal “Richard Jones is a poet of the heart.”—Poetry Richard Jones is a poet of uncommon perceptual gifts and emotional depth. Long admired for his storytelling and candid, unadorned diction, Jones mines daily life to reveal our quietest moments and best selves.

At Last We Enter Paradise
ISBN: 1556590423 OCLC: 24143397

Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, Wash. : ©1991.

Poetry East editor Jones' second collection is an ambitious, symphonic collection of poems on grief, loss, and human separateness.

Country of Air
ISBN: 0914742922 OCLC: 14702413

Richard Jones, author of ten books of poetry and criticism and editor of Poetry East, teaches at DePaul University in Chicago.

Innocent Things
ISBN: 093856630X OCLC: 13136347

Sonnets
ISBN: 0938566482 OCLC: 23464303

Stranger on Earth
ISBN: 1556595352 OCLC: 1007759534

Richard Jones’s prodigious volume travels the wide arc of a lifetime in Proustian detail. He remembers a peripatetic upbringing, travels to London and Paris, separation from and reunion with his wife in the Italian countryside, morning tea with his daughter and trail runs with his sons, flights with a pioneering aviator father and conversations with a deaf mother. "Impossible task, staying alive," Jones writes, and yet a perspicacious examination of the life we have lived yields clarity and enrichment. Finding poetry in what went before, Stranger on Earth opens the door to what Proust calls "those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter."

The Blessing: New & Selected Poems
ISBN: 1556591438 OCLC: 43615239

Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, Wash. : ©2000.

Gathering out-of-print and previously uncollected poems together with new poems and work from four previous volumes, The Blessing provides an overview of one of the most surprising, deceptively accessible poets currently writing. Jones’s poems explore the sacredness of the ordinary and everyday, imbuing the simplest of human gestures with delicate grace. Whether coming home to a burglarized house, weeping over a nineteenth-century novel while riding a train through the Italian countryside, or simply cooking tomato soup in a yellow pot, he writes from a calm interior and creates a beautiful and fabulous world.

The Correct Spelling and Exact Meaning
ISBN: 1556593171 OCLC: 456178282

Richard Jones examines the details of daily life as though through a childs' eyes, taking in every wondrous moment as if time were nonexistent, yet with the intensely painful understanding that the elemental world of the family is fleeting. Jones, who is strongly influenced by Rilke and Keats, is a master of metaphor who can transform mundane things into sacred objects.

  The Stone It Lives On
ISBN: 0938566830 OCLC: 44598303

Adastra Press, Easthampton, Mass. : 2000.

The sixteen poems contained in Richard Jones's new chapbook, THE STONE IT LIVES ON, each call up a twinge of loss from tragedies that range from the historic to the everyday. Of Jones's poetry, Sam Hamill has said, Richard Jones is one of the most vital and compelling voices of his generation. His art is so skillfully subtle as to become almost transparent, while his poetry opens a luminous world. Author of AT LAST WE ENTER PARADISE, COUNTRY OF AIR, PERFECT TIME, and SONNETS -- all available from SPD -- Richard Jones teaches at DePaul University and edits the journal Poetry East. Perfectbound.

Windows and Walls
ISBN: 0938566113 OCLC: 9642449

Printed & bound by hand at the Adastra Press by Gary Metras. Some of these poems appeared previously in various periodicals.

 

 

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