Pre-Owned Things That Happen Once: New Poems (Hardcover) 0395771439 9780395771433

On receiving the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1990 for his third book, Transparent Gestures, Rodney Jones was hailed as "a brand-new world-class poet." He continues to draw praise for the force, the vitality, the intelligence of his poetry. Things That Happen Once, his fifth volume, may well be Jones's finest yet, combining currents of southern evangelism, contemporary sophistication, and passionate moral engagement. Its forty-one poems display an exciting power of language and open up new visions of inheritance and parenthood, sexuality and change. They venture to illuminate the significance of Coca-Cola, television, Gina Lollobrigida's decolletage, cotton picking, murderers and coroners, grandparents and sheriffs, bad girls and plow horses, memory and desire, hunger, sex, and bread. In doing so, they release energy that American poets and readers of poetry will eagerly welcome.