Winner
of the 2003 Tales Prize: Deenewood, A Sequence, Poems by Arlene Swift
Jones
In
this taut multi-generational verse novel spoken in the voices of different
family members, Arlene Swift Jones captures the tribulations and joys
of lives rooted in a single place. This layered family chorus, singing
in minor key, is unlike any other in contemporary poetry and is richly
deserving of the Tales Prize for narrative poetry.
Sample Poems by Arlene Swift Jones
"Arlene Jones in Deenewood, A Sequence,
gives us an extraordinarily rich and historic saga of family passions.
In a harrowing sequence of poems about 'those house of things, possessions/
that replaces love,' the voices of the living and the dead tell
of war and objets, and of how a family line ends. It's enthralling, this
entrance to a 'house cracked open like an oyster/ what is thought to be
its pearls/strewn and peered at by every public eye.' Jones' poetry is
confident, exacting, vividly bringing us into the traumas, prejudices
and sad beauties of Deenewood, and then releasing us into the keeping
of its daughters. This is porcelain poetry, every detail lovingly rendered."--Dick
Allen
"We’ve all visited, as tourists, or perhaps as descendents, an historic
manor, and wondered at the lives of those generations who lived there.
Arlene Jones makes such a family estate come alive with tremendous poignancy
and economy. She gives us, in Deenewood: A Sequence, a multi-generational
saga that permits the reader to enter into the sorrows, desires, and angers
of the men and women, who, as children and as adults, lived out the history
of a place, impacted, as we all most certainly are, by world events, as
well as by the realized and thwarted ambitions of parents and grandparents.
One seldom encounters a collection of highly-crafted poems that demonstrate
such historical and emotional range. Every object, every scene, every
story, unfolds symbolically, and in totality, gives us a vision that continues
to enrich the imagination."--Gray Jacobik
"A magnificent accomplishment, these 21 poems of Deenewood: A Sequence. Starting with the auction
of fine bric-a-brac as a mansion is being dismantled, the poems,
always in the control of this fine poet, move back and forth in time and
among many characters to tell the bitter story of three generations
of a powerful and doomed American family. The observer in many of the
poems is the daughter-in-law of the latest generation. It is she who has
stored 'endless stories of the dead and struggles to be free.' The stories
include four wars, premature death, great bigotry, possessions that seem
to substitute for life. A vein of cruelty in the male line almost blots
out the possibilities of love. The speaker survives, barely, to lead her
'daughters into the blaze of day.' Large figures, mythic drama, yet
true to life and history, are captured in brilliant recreations of nature,
events and passions. Jones’ language and rhythms are their equal.
An extraordinary work, rare in these days."--Sondra Zeidenstein
"Like new blood to an old line, the vivid language, passionate intelligence
and 'unshielded gaze' of Arlene Jones quicken to life the denizens of
Deenewood in this fascinating
saga of presiding ghosts, blighted bridal hopes, the emotional frost of
martial men, monogrammed lives, objects that possess their owners. With
lyrical power and a searing candor, these artful poems reveal the hidden
interior of a disappearing world."--Eleanor Wilner
ISBN 1932339167, 136 pages, $16.00
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