Something Wonderful

Something Wonderful embodies a vast, intimate terrain. These poems listen back through lenses of nature, variations of joy, sorrow, mischief, surrender, death, and a few constellations of mystery in between. Paul Jones perches the reader in limbs that were empty choir lofts. From this vantage point of his lyrical universe we experience the space between dreams, new worlds created by old words spoken, odes to tubers, donuts, and the magical everydayness of where poetry lives and is sustained. Something Wonderful offers poetics that are accessible, language that stirs memory, and imagery that overflows cups meant to constrain. This new collection by Paul Jones makes us swoon to a song about “a world where nothing that is cut bleeds.” -Jaki Shelton Green, author of Feeding the Light and All the Songs We Sing with Lenard D. Moore.

Paul Jones reminds us formal control doesn’t limit imagination-it frees it to spiral, to alight on Krispy Kreme Donuts, on porches, on red-vinegar sauce, on divorcees (one of the best persona poems I’ve read in years), on cat memes, and on a beached whale whose insides are ‘a library / of what has gone wrong.’ Jones knows how to beautifully staple down words. His language simultaneously holds and releases music, tenderness, curiosity, wit, and nostalgia. Something wonderful indeed.-Eduardo Corral, author of Guillotine: Poems and Slow Lightning.