many dreams many nightmares

A Lucent Fire

A Lucent Fire: New and Selected

It is November and it is bright or gray depending on the day and precipitation.  The Northeast has the kind of light that dazzles. And then there are days that truly chill your bones.  And then so much carnage, Beirut, Paris, Kenya–the ugly angry work of men intent on inflicting pain suffering and death.  How to respond?  We must with creativity, liberality, generosity and intelligence as in discernment.    So let us stay with dreams that are not nightmares.

First, I yet again am the first feature of a new journal.  This time quotidienbee started by Shanna Compton and the wonderful people at Bloof!.  Here’s the link. https://medium.com/the-quotidian-bee/self-portrait-as-shop-window-da5fadc3a952/.  I know that David Rivard will just love this.  Also, my poem “Dancer” was posted on poets.org’s Poem of the Day site.

I just heard that I will be receiving a grant for my work from a wonderful Fund for women writers–am waiting for the announcement to post.

I am very proud that The Future Imagined Differently is up and does with very little what others spend millions on. http://aboutplacejournal.org/

Wonderful poets from Shelagh Patterson to Tai Allen to Christina Olivares to Sharon Mesmer are a few of the writers featured and great artists such as Denise Milan and Janet Goldner are presented.

And I look forward to reading December 9 I will be reading at The Poetry Project with Susie Timmons.    These are all dreams come true for me.

We are living in violent times.  We are also living in times where many among us are looking deeply at how we make this world–how we hold what is dear to us and work to bring harmony and peace.  War is not to taken lightly and the greatest nightmare is the kind of rhetoric coming out of many of those now running for the Presidency–we need wise people not easy bellicosity. Let us work to be as intelligent, generous, and creative as we can be.  Let our dreams flourish and those nightmares wither.

 

HARVEST: A Lucent Fire from White Pine Press and About Place Journal now “live”

A Lucent Fire

Cover: A Lucent Fire: New and Selected

HAPPY DANCE IN MY HEAD HAPPY DANCE IN MY HEAD

This year has been one of my most productive and I am so pleased to have my newest full-length collection: A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems covering work from 1975 to the present!  It’s been quite a trip.  I am looking forward to getting this new book into the hands of readers.  My publisher Dennis Maloney has created a wonderful promotion:

To celebrate the release of our latest volume in our Distinguished Poets Series, A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems by Patricia Spears Jones, if you order from the White Pine website we will include another White Pine title of our choosing with your order.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips says of this collection: “There is a wise and dangerous fire in Jones’ poetry that harkens back to James Baldwin and, further back to the Old Testament: the past–both a highly personal past and an expansive civic past–”

http://www.whitepine.org/catalog.php?show=2014#A

So check out my new book!  Read, let e know what you think.  Enjoy

On October 5, The Future Imagined Differently Imagined for About Place Journal went live at http://aboutplacejournal.org/

Poets, essayists, artists, composers are included from Myra Sklarew, Marcella Durand, Shelagh Patterson, Margo Berdeshevsky, Tony Medina, Purvi Shah, William Nixon, Ras Moshe Barnett, Jason Kao Hwang, Robbie McCauley, Beverly Naidus and the great Brasilian artist, Denise Milan.

Happy Dance Happy Dance

photo by Rachel Eliza Griffths

photo by Rachel Eliza Griffths