Description: "A collection of poems by Patricia Spears Jones"--
Review Quotes:
Praise for The Beloved Community
"These poems could easily sag under the weight of their grief, yet Jones' short, sharp-talking lines, staccato sentences, and light-on-feet litanies propel the reader down the paths she has paved."--Arden Levine, Under a Warm Green Linden
"As she moves through space and place, Spears Jones tangles with trauma both specific and abstracted, large-scale and local, with an American 'ecology of fear.' . . . But for all the trauma, love more than rage wins out: this is a collection about kinship and the forms it takes, even after death, as well as about Spears Jones's belief in the power of poetry to articulate and embody such kinship."--Rona Cran, Brooklyn Rail
"Spears Jones's imagistic internationalist, docu-political sentences resemble conversation but stop you in your tracks."--Diane Mehta, Electric Lit
Praise for Patricia Spears Jones
"Jones's poems, written during the past two decades, vibrate with a noticeable hunger and irresistible energy, unashamed to explore the nuances of intimacy via the looming specters of pop culture and history."--Publishers Weekly
"Poems like stars in a constellation: each glowing point connects in a pattern charting lives full of love and disappointment, injustice and defeat, joy and resilience."--Library Journal
"Patricia Spears Jones's poems are like homecomings--in her pages the sights and smells, rhythms and caresses of many lives waft up from Memphis and Manhattan. . . ."--Thulani Davis
"A world where music and brains are allowed to co-exist with instinct, where the lyrics and the literal may dwell without eyeing the other with suspicion."--Cornelius Eady
"Jones returns to her source, a steady presence of desire, pleasure (fun!), and beauty as literally lifesaving."--BOMB Magazine
"No matter what the risk, Jones is not afraid to touch."--Arkansas Review
"A lyric collection that is engaging, honest, and with sprinkles of delightful humor."--Tribes
"These are the careful insights of a woman who has experienced and noticed more tragic scenes."--Black Issues Book Review