At Last We Enter Paradise

by Richard Jones

Overview

Poetry East editor Jones' second collection is an ambitious, symphonic collection of poems on grief, loss, and human separateness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556590429
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	07/01/1991
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Richard Jones is the author of ten books of poetry and criticism and editor of Poetry East. He teaches at DePaul Universityin Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

Jones ( Country of Air ) writes brief, simple poems about isolated incidents while gracefully alluding to the complex relationships underlying them. The view from an abandoned house reeking with the ``smell of urine'' reveals a ``small, white, / freshly painted''--but equally empty--church. Jones places both church and house in an unexplained relation with one another that tantalizes the reader. In ``The Wedding Party,'' the best man at an outdoor marriage celebration performs ``loops and rolls'' in a plane. During a climb he stalls, crashes to Earth and the newlyweds run ``toward the fire.'' The poem implies--again intriguingly--that the pilot's fatal daring somehow parallels the couple's. When Jones narrates from an ``I,'' however, the poems tend to forfeit their sharpness. ``Back Then'' intends to link two sets of relations that the narrator has with men--his boss and his father; yet the poem meanders for several pages before drawing the connection. Several similar pieces make for a disppointing inconsistency in this collection, whose best poems forgo ``flashing epiphany'' for more implicit illuminations. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A compelling sincerity marks these poems, a poignant grief that captivates the reader without ever becoming sentimental. Jones knows our ``desire for details,'' and he provides images of houses, gardens, antique shops, hospitals, and cemeteries, because a poet, like ``a garbage truck,'' welcomes ``everything.'' And ``everything'' includes a drowned son, a lost lover, an estranged wife, an aborted child, and a distant father. Never self-indulgent, the poet transforms these painful separations into memorable poetry by means of simple language and dream-like imagery: in an abandoned house, ``glass cracks underfoot,/ dust lifts into light.'' The ``paradise'' Jones discovers is that of making self-sustaining art in the most adverse conditions. To read At Last We Enter Paradise is to share in a beautiful and memorable catharsis. Recommended for all general poetry collections.-- Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.

Library Journal