The Blessing: New and Selected Poems

The Blessing gathers under one cover Richard Jones' insightfully candid and supremely accessible poetry providing a comprehensive overview survey of this superb and uniquely talented poet. Things: I got to a dimly lit secondhand store/to lift empty champagne glasses/and open dusty drawers./I buy the broken chair/and dedicate myself/to its new life./I leave with the chipped vase,/the cracked violin, the yellowed lace.//I go to bright department stores/where aisles of merchandise/sing their songs/beneath fluorescent lights --/ desks, sofas, picture frames,/asking for a reason to exist,/demanding our secrets, our love,/every thing demanding/everything of my life.

Yesterday, (June 11, 2000) I was fortunate to attend an afternoon poetry reading at Beyond Baroque, in Santa Monica, CA, where Richard Jones read from this, his newest book. Nothing beats hearing a poet read what he/she has written. While I was sitting, waiting for the reading to begin, I leafed through this volume and run across the poem "Golf Towels." Jones coincidentally included this poem in his reading. He described his father's fascination for discarded golf towels. His father was at one time an airline pilot (impetus for Jones' book "Country of Air"), dissatisfied with his career. Now, as golf course "Marshall" for his local course, Jones' father gets great satisfaction in retrieving all sorts of discarded golf paraphernalia (some by the marshy paths, some in the trash bins), especially golf towels. After Jones read this poem, which included references to four different males named "Andrew" in his family, I later made the connection of a fifth "Andrew" in the poem, the golf towel from St. Andrews golf course in Scotland. This light blue towel, with a gold crown in the center, was wrapped around Richard's baby son (Andrew), fresh from a bath, and who was then handed to his grandfather's arms. (The poem says it so much more eloquently than I can describe it here.) Besides publishing Jones' newest poems, "The Blessing" is a collection of four of his earlier books of poetry, which had been of print. Not only is it a blessing to read Richard Jones' newest works, but it is a blessing to once again have in print his older, equally powerful works, taking measure of the progress of his life.