Rodney Jones



Rodney Jones (1950-) is an American poet and academic.

Life
Jones was born in rural Alabama. He describes his childhood as “very much like being a part of another age. Our community still did not have electricity until I was 5 or 6 years old.” He attended the University of Alabama, and then earned a M.F.A. at the University of North Carolina.

He is professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Recognition
Jones was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award. His 2006 book ''Salvation blues won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the 2007 International Griffin Poetry Prize. His other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Peter I.B. Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Southeast Booksellers Association Award, and a Harper Lee Award.

Publications

 * The Story They Told Us of Light (1980)
 * The Unborn (1985)
 * Transparent Gestures (1989)
 * Apocalyptic Narrative (1993)
 * Things That Happen Once (1996)
 * Elegy for the Southern Drawl (1999)
 * Kingdom of the Instant: Poems (2004)
 * Salvation Blues (2006)
 * Imaginary Logic (2011)