Elegy for the Southern Drawl [Paperback]

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.

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.

A brand-new, world-class poet. National Book Critics Circle

Jones is brilliant . . . I love reading him. He gives me hope for poetry. --Gerald Stern

The supreme example we have of the southern human person speaking in American poetry. --Kate Daniels

Sometimes in one summer, one would hear, In one family, four or five distinct accents: Low-country mushmouth; mountain twang

The almost r-less river talk of merchant planters Droned out and of a lazy kinship to the sleek Ambidextrous blackspeak of their former slaves

And the hated northun brogue, smuggled Back from Dee-troit to parlay credit on a half Pound of bologna and a box of Velveeta cheese.

Copyright © 1999 by Rodney Jones