Elegy for the Southern Drawl

By Rodney Jones

Book Overview

Exulting in the speech of his native Alabama, Rodney Jones's new poems combine satire and ode, formal lament and ribald joke. James Dickey praised this poet's early work as one of our most poignant and inescapable renditions of the agony at the historical razor's edge. Now, in his sixth book, Jones extends his emotional and stylistic range. He writes of football and feminism, of DDT and family, of crows and sex, of ink and raccoons and perpetual-motion machines. In many of these poems the southern drawl lives forever, riding on the tide of regional language, poking fun yet delighting in it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618082492
• ISBN13: 9780618082490
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

First Rate Work from a First Rate Poet

Rodney Jones is among the most unique poets we've ever had--he can make you smile; he can hurt you good. His ear for the cadences of speech--all speech, from the corn pone plain-spoken to academic nit-wittery--is superb. He gets better every book, and he was fabulous three or four books back.

The best book to be released this year

Rodney Jones is the best Southern poet working today

Narratives like strong trees, a lyric gift of blossoms

Rodney Jones can tell the kind of stories that get you through a hard night or accompany you on a journey home. He writes in a cranked-up, gentled-out vernacular that is as sturdy and dependable as an old hickory, but his lyric gifts make blossoms spring forth even in the coldest times. His South is a place in the heart and a place in the mouth where we can commit beauty or atrocity but where we are always revealing, under his hand, our proud and vulnerable humanity. This will be the best book of poetry published in English this year.