Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems, 1985-2005

by Rodney Jones

Book Overview

Rodney Jones has long been praised for his masterly storytelling and the bold southern voice he brings to his poetry. Salvation Blues celebrates the range and evolution of his work over a twenty-year period with one hundred selected poems -- including twenty-four bold pieces published only in this collection.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618872264
• ISBN13: 9780618872268
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Awesome

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.

No Happy Like the Blues

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.

One Hundred Poems to read over and over again

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.