Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems, 1985-2005 (Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award) [Hardcover]

Rodney Jones (Author)

Book Description

Series: Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award | Publication Date: March 17, 2006

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jones, who grew up in rural Alabama, and whose mother and grandparents (the poems tell us) were farm workers, pursues gritty anecdotes that place him within a Southern narrative tradition from Robert Penn Warren to Yusef Komunyakaa and Dave Smith. In this culling from six previous volumes and from new work, Jones (Elegy for the Southern Drawl) portrays "cows named for friends/ and fated for slaughterhouses"; "the tongue-tied, the murderous, the illiterate/ And the alcoholic"; waitresses in "the Benzedrine light of waffle houses"; "a semi loaded with bridge girders"; mules, pigs, and hard physical labor; "fingers cracked by frost/ And lacerated by Johnson grass." As much as he chronicles hard lives, Jones (who teaches at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale) shows an unusual intellectual reach and a large verbal ambition. While this ample book will serve many readers as an introduction to Jones's work, it also contains surprises for his fans: 24 new poems (some his best yet) build on his descriptive strengths as they incorporate political commentary, remembering high school, conceiving the end of the human species or excoriating politicians who sing the "Low-Down Sorry Right-Wing Blues." (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Jones' more-than-20-year compilation of six volumes is a six-pack of rich southern smoothness. If poetic voices were heard on the radio, his would be a late-night crooning of midnight tales. Satisfying. Deep as a well. Filled with a bit of everything. Although it's an overused term in today's poetics, it is anything but a slap to suggest that Jones' poems are accessible. And although the literati play a role in "The Poetry Reading' (which reminds one of Mark Strand's "The Great One" in sardonic fun), "Plea for Forgiveness," and "The Limousine Bringing Isaac Bashevis Singer to Carbondale," Jones is hardly above writing about laundry and male genitals. A sample: "A young terrorist, sprung from prison / And bound for home, bent on sedition." Jones' poems report on a life spent detailing the sacred and the profane, and together they create a solid, highly recommended volume. Mark Eleveld
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (March 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618624309
• ISBN-13: 978-0618624300
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #346,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Happy Like the Blues, May 11, 2007

By 

Kyle Minor "reader" (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems 1985-2005 (Paperback)

Salvation Blues collects 100 of Rodney Jones's best poems, culling material from Kingdom of the Instant, Elegy for the Southern Drawl (his best book), Things That Happen Once, Transparent Gestures, Apocalyptic Narrative, and The Unborn. (Only poems from his first book, The Story They Told Us of Light, are omitted), and adding what would have amounted to an entire book's worth of new poems.

There is no poet working today who is better with narrative, and no poet who can wring so much lyric intensity out of narrative material. This book is a good showcase of Jones's material, and a great place for a new reader to begin reading him. For longtime readers, the new poems are reason enough to want to own the book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome, November 14, 2008

By 

Mississippi J (Wyoming) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems, 1985-2005 (Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award) (Hardcover)

I can't often read contemporary poetry anymore. I used to, but it got too hip for itself, too much insider lit. Rodney Jones' work never does that. These are deep and thoughtful poems, and more often than not, funnier than hell. The reader is never shut out of Rodney's world, s/he is invited time and time again to be a part of it.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Hundred Poems to read over and over again, March 27, 2006

By 

Jon Tribble (Carbondale, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems, 1985-2005 (Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award) (Hardcover)

Salvation Blues is testament to twenty years of some of the most devilish, intelligent, and humane letters you can find in contemporary poetry. Rodney Jones writes with an honest voice driven by both condemnation and joy for the world's shortcomings and marvels. This is a book to send to anyone who doesn't believe poetry can change the way you think and feel about the world around you.