Born and raised in Arkansas, Patricia Spears Jones aka Patricia Jones has
lived in New York City since the mid-1970s where she has been involved in
the city's poetry and theater scenes as poet, editor, anthologist, teacher
and former Program Coordinator for the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church
and working with Mabou Mines, the internationally acclaimed theater
collective.
She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Goethe Institute for travel and research in Germany. Green Integer selected her for The PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English 2005-2006 . Agni selected “Sapphire” as an honorable mention for the Anne Sexton Poetry Prize in 2000. She has received fellowships to Yaddo, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Photo: Arkansas Literary Festival photo-Glenn Nishimura
Painkiller:
Poems
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Paperback: 76 pages
Publisher: Tia Chucha (November 30, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1882688406
ISBN-13: 978-1882688401
"Jones is a poet’s poet– a true master. Here she shows is how a poet thinks
about the everyday-ness of being alive and forges observation and perception
into art." -- poetry editor Laura Baudo Sillerman
Two Poems from Painkiller: Poems from Tia Chucha Press, November 2010. Distributed by Northwestern University Press.
Painkiller
I can taste the metal
lose my desire for red meat
relax, every muscle
relax
emotion
relax
the time of day
I can give you
the time of day
What I talk about is how
love eludes me
No what I talk about is
what’s wrong with me
No what I talk about is
what will happen to me
Fear
is the secret.
Always fear.
What you get from me is
the edge of a trace of shadows
and that’s all you’ll get
I can’t give anymore
I don’t want to
Everything hurts
This hurtle into living space
and that swift slide out of it.
You want secrets
I say every reckless act
results from a moment of fear.
While compassion is the simple recognition
That what is done cannot be undone,
may not be forgiven.
And a recognition that the murderer and the martyr
the adulterer and the healer can at any moment
change positions, become the other.
It simply depends on how much pain
You need to kill.
Son Cubano
We are at the genesis of a bolero
eyes, lips, thick, kinky dreads
beds, cars, stars
a singer’s words curve
through memory and shadow
rhythms stumble and stop,
come again, the night air a willing audience.
men huddle near a long, brass bar rail,
shoes gleaming, lips smiling, eyes lit
as women, young and old, stroll pass them
on their way to the powder room
las mujeres motion a dream of sand and waves
a Cuba that only the restaurant owner
and his waiters may have truly seen, heard.
late winter, rains slicking the streets of lower Manhattan,
Son Cubano’s portals reveal a theater of nostalgia
the scent of Havana scripts so well.
And we play along
mouths flavored with rum, lime, sugar, our tongues playing
the kisses stolen game as the song phrases
a fierce sadness promised
in the wake of lust’s mercurial ascent
We flee these orchestrated memories
our hands in each others, our mouths hungry for each other.
Our song is bluer, harsher, North American
the rhythms African, yes, as dearly measured in drama and depth.
Our exile is internal. There is little longing
for the good old days when Havana was a mean place
for dark people, but a real fascination
for these songs and their makers.
Your arms cascade a trumpet solo, the piano’s
harmonics thrill my back.
My lips are waiting for yours.
This is our bolero
accidental
lovemaking Friday night New York City
Everybody’s exotic.
Everybody’s from the South.
Femme
du Monde (Woman of the World)
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Paperback: 120 pages
Publisher: Tia Chucha (June 7, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1882688317
ISBN-13: 978-1882688319
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.3 inches
"Spears Jones’ second collection Femme du Monde does not simply unfold the artful experiences of a woman who has traveled and soaked up the international monuments of canvas, celluloid and literature. These are the careful insights of a woman who has experienced and noticed more tragic scenes". --Tara Betts
The
Weather That Kills
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Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Coffee House Press; First Edition edition (June 1, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1566890292
ISBN-13: 978-1566890298
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
In her first collection, Jones illuminates "the secret joy beneath grim
turbulence" that propels these poems into her readers' hearts and minds.
Exploring "the daily material that makes a life being lived" with a fluent
intelligence, she connects the personal to political, self to other, then to
now. Rooted in the complexity of the American experience, she traces the
presence of the human spirit?heroic, betrayed, betraying?in art, history,
geography, politics and popular culture with riveting shifts of scale and
focus. "The Perfect Lipstick" moves from a consideration of Christopher
Columbus to the slave trade and then leaps assuredly to her "favorite shade
of lipstick, Sherry Velour," whose name suggests "Black men in sequined
dresses and the click of new words/ in the new world where the most
dangerous of dreams/ come true." In "Glad All Over," the poet, an African
American, recounts her childhood experience of the civil rights struggle in
the South during the '60s in a quiet, truthful telling that gives tribute to
"our family's ordinary courage" and creates a compelling, defining image of
a pivotal time. --Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
BOMBLive! Lorenzo Pace interviewed by Patricia Spears Jones
Related Links
Official Website
http://www.psjones.com/
