Patricia Spears Jones on Close Listening

Patricia Spears Jones talks with Charles Bernstein about her new selected poems, the influence of the blues and the pentecostal church (and sonnets) on her poems, her conversation with popular songs,  her sense of communities and ideal readers, the performance of her work, her "contrarian" broadsides on politics and culture, and her persistent commitment to beauty.

MP3 (38:18): MP3

Jones grew up in Arkansas  but has been living in New York City since the mid-1970s. She is author of the poetry collections Painkiller and Femme du Monde from Tia Chucha Press and The Weather That Kills from Coffee House Press. Her fourth full collection of poetry, A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems, is just out from White Pine Press. Jones has been an art activist, including a sting as Program Coordinator at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church  and New Works Program director at the Massachusetts Council of Arts and Humanities, and as Director of Planning and Development at The New Museum of Contemporary Art (1994-96). She curates WORDS SUNDAY, a literary and performance series focused on Brooklyn based writers and artists. Jones teaches at the City University of New York. You can listen to Jones read her work in her PennSound page. 

This is the 143rd Close Listening program.