Strata (Poems), Signed

STRATA, poems by Roger Jones, Winner of the 1993 Texas Review Breakthrough Series (Southwestern Region), softcover, first edition, signed by the poet, 1993. BOOK CONDITION: near fine. The text block is in fine condition, with no tears, dogears, or marks. No bookplate or signature of prior owner. Inscribed and signed by the poet in 1994 on the title page. Not a library book or remainder. The wraps are in very good condition (slight curling of upper righthand corner). 9 x 6, 61 pages, 10 ounces XX [From the back cover] Comments on STRATA: These poems dig down into the gouged earth, into the heart of the Texas landscape, into a deep family history. They are radiant and true (Edward Hirsch, Texas Review Breakthrough Series Judge). I like the way Roger Jones makes simple words go off like gongs. STRATA is a generous tumble of memory, details of a boyhood's awesome discoveries. Some poems alarm us; some lift us out of flat, caliche plains to more discoveries than I thought could touch or delight me. Focused like Kinser in Jones' first poem, Roger Jones stares with his good eyes so we can open ours. Vividly, with sounds that put me there, he makes me admire the way a chainsaw pops and razzes; he makes climbing the caprock, sleeping on a pallet, and kite flying fun, and the chime of whippoorwills a song I want to carry forever. This is a poetry of celebration and coping, facing the hard facts of rust or drought and making do, listening to whippoorwills and death rattles and going on. This is a poetry of dirt daubers and wasps, tornadoes and pine saplings, but mainly family. Roger Jones understands the ordinary need for love and courage, grief and mercy. Jones allows that vast East Texas strata and those flat West Texas plains to dwarf any human story; but it's the human story he tells best of all, that heritage these poems recall, attics and porches filled not so much with ghosts but old memories, and baubles valuable because someone he might have loved once touched them (Walter McDonald). These richly populated poems contain whole worlds and layers of living, human, animal, earthen. They dig and sift. They tip their heads to listen for smallest calls and clues. The sense of big Texas space feels deeply tender and known, haunted by time and loss, pierced by detail and desire. I want to enter the world owls govern, writes Jones, and you have no doubt he might know how (Naomi Shihad Nye). I was especially pleased when Edward Hirsch advised me that he had selected (from eight 'blind' finalist manuscripts) Roger Jones's STRATA as the winner of our Southwestern Division of the breakthrough series. I have known Jones's poetry for years; in fact, we published his chapbook Remembering New London back in 1980 and have over the years published many of his poems in TR. I believe him to be one of the freshest and most dynamic voices in Southwestern poetry today, as the poems in STRATA well demonstrate (Paul Ruffin, Editor, Texas Review).…