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"A collection of poems by Patricia Spears Jones"--
About the author
Brooklyn-based poet Patricia Spears Jones is the author of four collections including
A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems (2015) and five chapbooks. Her work has been anthologized in
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, and she is the editor of
Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women Poets. Jones is the winner of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from
Poets & Writers and the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. An active literary citizen of New York for over four decades, Jones served as program coordinator for The Poetry Project of St. Marks Church and founded the WORDS Sunday series in Brooklyn. Currently, Jones is a Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Black Earth Institute.
Summary
Dedicated to friends, fellow artists, and resilient working people, The Beloved Community sees Jones at her best as she writes toward and in search of all that connects and disconnects us.In her fifth poetry collection, The Beloved Community, Jackson Poetry Prize winner Patricia Spears Jones interrogates the necessity and fragility of human bonds: sensual, familial, societal. From lyric to elegy, far-reaching poems use word play and metaphor to create richly textured landscapes in search of community. As we traverse delis, laundromats, and the Brooklyn block where morning glories grow “leaves plump as Italian cookies,” poems about poverty, art, and community, become poems about location—always the city is alive and breathing. Later, the collection widens its view, leaving Brooklyn to visit the consequences of violence across America.
From the Atlanta Child Murders to the murder of Nia Wilson, The Beloved Community is fearless in its rage and hope as it explores what disrupts— oppression, injustice, loss, grief, and a fraught sense of the erotic. Largely dedicated to musicians, artists, and fellow poets, Jones acknowledges art as tools for both care and resistance, recognizing that “voice is our greatest magic.” Imbued with history, laced with tenderness, and channeling a long tradition of the blues in African American poetics, The Beloved Community speaks with spark and urgency.
