Imaginary Logic

Its Joness age-defying distinction to have mobilized a moral intelligence thats sufficiently vast to contain multitudes.Washington Post Book World Imaginary Logic is a brilliantly expansive deeply meditative and at times wildly imaginative collection of poems that combines Rodney Joness distinctive storytelling ability sharp social intelligence and keen powers of observation in a book that is wistful satiric audacious and remorseless. The Art of Heaven opens with a parody of Dante and a down-home twisted humor that Joness readers have come to rely on: In the middle of my life I came to a dark wood / the smell of barbecue kids running in the yards. / Not deep depression. This nice hell of suburbs. / Speed bumps. The way things arent quite paradise. Jones winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award is one of Americas best most generous and most brilliantly readable poets (Poetry). Imaginary Logic is the most eloquent expression yet of his rigorous mind scrupulous eye and capacious heart. [Jones] poems are a work of hands and hands-on. His rich lyric sentences register experience at the full and thus at its high moment of complexity. Like most of the important poets hes a lapsed pastoralist attempting to restoreno savethe fallen.Stanley Plumly