Stephen Jonas Selected Poems

Rating:
Summary: Exciting find, amazing sound
Review: Stephen Jonas' work is an exciting discovery for me. I had read the work of many of his Boston colleagues and post-modern poetry more generally, but I have rarely come across poems with so much jazzy beauty in their sound. Jonas' _Exercises for Ear_ which are reproduced here are exceptional and showcase his obsession with the rhythm and sound of his verse. His life story is also fascinating; racially ambiguous, gay, and always prickly politically, he is still enigmatic today. Later in life Jonas seems to have become increasingly mentally ill and espoused bizarre political beliefs, but in all of this he remains uncategorizable, his own person unassimilated to anyone's stereotype of the gay black poet. His rage at the conventional world and its hypocrisy sings, but does not scream, as so much poetry did and continues to in the age of Slam.