Salvation blues : one hundred poems, 1985-2005 / Rodney Jones.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jones, Rodney, 1950-

Language:

English

Physical Description:

ix, 246 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Summary:

Rodney Jones has been called "the supreme example of the southern human person speaking in American poetry" (Southern Review) and one of the nation's "best, most generous, and most brilliantly readable poets" (Poetry). Salvation Blues traces the career of this popular narrative poet through one hundred choice poems, including twenty-four bold new pieces.

Contents:

From The Unborn (1985)

Remembering Fire 3

Sweep 4

For Those Who Miss the Important Parts 6

I Find Joy in the Cemetery Trees 8

Thoreau 10

The First Birth 12

A History of Speech 14

The Laundromat at the Bay Station 16

The Mosquito 19

For the Eating of Swine 21

Two Girls at the Harselle, Alabama, Municipal Swimming Pool 23

Decadence 24

From Transparent Gestures (1989)

Transparent Gestures 33

One of the Citizens 35

The Sadness of Early Afternoons 37

On the Bearing of Waitresses 40

The Kitchen Gods 42

Mule 44

The Foolishness 47

Winter Retreat: Homage to Martin Luther King, Jr. 49

Pussy 51

Every Day There Are New Memos 53

Carpe Diem 55

A Blasphemy 57

Pastoral for Derrida 59

Life of Sundays 61

From Apocalyptic Narrative and Other Poems (1993)

The Work of Poets 65

The Bridge 67

Grand Projection 69

Romance of the Poor 72

Thirty-one Flavors of Houses 75

At the Miracle Mall 76

Contempt 79

Shame the Monsters 84

At Summerford's Rest Home 86

Moment of Whitman 88

The Privilege 90

Apocalyptic Narrative 92

From Things That Happen Once (1996)

TV 101

Mortal Sorrows 103

Beautiful Child 105

Nell 107

Risks 109

First Fraudulent Muse 111

In the Spirit of Limuel Hardin 113

The End of Communism 116

A Ride with the Commander 119

On Pickiness 121

Ground Sense 123

Sex 125

Dirty Blues 128

Don't Worry 130

Lurleen 133

From Elegy for the Southern Drawl (1999)

Down Time 139

Doing Laundry 140

The Poetry Reading 142

Refusing to Baptize a Son 144

Not See Again 145

Plea for Forgiveness 148

The Limousine Bringing Isaac Bashevis Singer to Carbondale 150

Sacrament for My Penis 153

The Obsolescence of Thou 154

Elegy for the Southern Drawl 155

The Assault on the Fields 165

The Sorrow Pageant 168

Blessed Assurance 171

From Kingdom of the Instant (2002)

A Whisper Fight at the Peck Funeral Home 177

Small Lower-Middle-Class White Southern Male 186

A Defense of Poetry 188

Bufus 190

Family Mattress 192

Channel 193

Homage to Mississippi John Hurt 194

The Masters 197

Moses 199

Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical 201

New Poems (2005)

Salvation Blues 209

The Attitude 210

Elves 212

The Boomers Take the Field 214

Sovereign Joy 216

The United States 217

My Monastery 220

Winton and Mildred 222

Avuncular 224

The State-Line Stripper 225

The Low-Down-Sorry Right-Wing Blues 226

Fears 228

Common-Law Kundalini 229

Sitting with Others 231

Thanksgiving in the Late Fifties 232

On Torture 233

Courtship 234

The Language of Love 235

Postmodern Christians 236

My Father's Big Idea 237

In High School 239

Vision of the End of the World in the Valdosta Holiday Inn 241

Olympiad 243

Rain on Tin 244.

ISBN:

0618624309

OCLC:

59011615

Publisher Number:

9780618624300