Synopses & Reviews
Many of the poems in Kingdom of the Instant attend to a particular moment to the individual existing in one place at the time life is lived. Some of them, like Keeping Time,” are urgent, even ominous (To be there with it, tock to its tick, mud / to its chink”). In others, the approach to the instant is dilatory, relaxed, as in one of the long poems, Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical” (Let loose. Lists into ashes. Tasks into stones”). The poet also addresses natural history and the environment; religiosity, the history and encumbrances of class, regionalism, and the American South; and the act of making poetry. There are homages to a number of masters, ranging from Wallace Stevens to Mississippi John Hurt, but concrete references give way to the fleeting impression, the given moment, the kingdom of the instant that Rodney Jones so strongly evokes. He is, line by line, sound by sound, at the top of his form.
Synopsis
With Kingdom of the Instant, Rodney Jones delivers a collection of poems that address both transcendent and profane aspects of the American South, art and politics, poverty and privilege. Always engaging, Jones "shows the intensity of his loving regard for every aspect of life, from the grit of the earth to the silk of the skin and all that churns in the mind" (Donna Seaman, Booklist).
About the Author
'RODNEY JONES, born in Alabama, is a professor of English atSouthern Illinois University at Carbondale. Salvation Blues is hiseighth book of poetry. Among his many honors, Jones was afinalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of a National BookCritics Circle Award, a Southeast Booksellers Association Award,and a Harper Lee Award.'
Table of Contents
Contents
One Keeping Time 3 A Whisper Fight at the Peck Funeral Home 6
Two Channel 21 Smoke 22 Small Lower-Middle-Class White Southern Male 24 Slop: A Childrens Prayer 25 A Country Legacy 27 A Defense of Poetry 29 Macabre Etude 31 Family Mattress 32 Homage to Mississippi John Hurt 33
Three Backward 39 Five Walks for the Nineteenth Century 42 The Music of Repose 53 Brains 56 Nudes 58 Bufus 61 Fidelity 63 Bones with No Meat on Them 65
Four A Photograph in an Old Anthology 69 Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical 71 Wood 81 The Harvest King 82 Going 83 Pompadour 84 The Roommate, 1969 85 Paradise 86
Five Divine Love 91 Moses 101 Song of Affirmation 103