In The Essential D G Jones, volume editor Jim Johnstone presents a selection of the most important writings of Douglas Gordon Jones, one of the few of Canada’s great lyric poets to expertly straddle the line between the modern and postmodern era.
About the Book
Known for his confident and elemental lyrics, and subtle shifts in diction, tone and voice, the poetry of D. G. Jones offers a portal to the natural world. Though initially his poetry tended toward formality and rigorous control, Jones’s style gradually evolved to become looser, more instinctual, given to linguistic flexibility and visual experimentation. The Essential D. G. Jones celebrates this poetic transformation, presenting the most important lyrics from all stages of Jones’s career, along with a few, never-before published poems to round out the collection.
The Essential Poets Series presents the works of Canada’s most celebrated poets in a package that is beautiful, accessible and affordable. The Essential D. G. Jones is the 14th volume in the series.
Read an Excerpt
I Annihilate
I annihilate the purple finch
in the apple tree
it is a winter dawn
it is ‘La Guerre’ Henri Rousseau
saw charging through the shattered space
of the Second Empire
it is a faint
raspberry
in the silent cosmos
c’est une tache
sur la page blanche
un cauchemar en rose
c’est le Québec
libre
a bird
c’est ça
un oiseau dans un pommier
it may fly off
but it won’t go away
I neglected to mention the snow
Praise
the craft of making buttons
that we may come apart
in style
horn, pewter, even plastic
pray, sir
undo this button
oh, we would clothe the mind
in politeness, even
in extremity
to button up is seemly, to
unbutton, step
seemingly without art into
nothing, is grace
About the Author
Douglas Gordon Jones was a Canadian writer, translator and critic. Born in 1929 in Bancroft, ON, he studied English Literature in university at McGill and Queen’s. He continued his career in academia, teaching at Bishop’s University before settling into a post at the Université de Sherbrooke. While there, he co-founded a bilingual literary journal ellipse: Writers in Translation (1969-2012), the only magazine of its kind in Canada. Jones was the author of ten books of poetry, and won the A. J. M. Smith Award for Poetry (1977), the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry (1989, 1995) and the Governor General’s Award, once in 1977 for his collection of poems, Under the Thunder the Flowers Light Up the Earth, and again in 1993 for his translation of Normand de Bellefeuille’s Categorics: 1, 2 & 3. In 2007, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Jones passed away in March 2016 in North Hatley, Quebec.
About the Editor
Jim Johnstone is a Canadian writer, editor, and physiologist. He is the author of four books of poetry: Dog Ear (Véhicule Press, 2014), Sunday, the locusts (Tightrope Books, 2011), Patternicity (Nightwood Editions, 2010) and The Velocity of Escape (Guernica Editions, 2008), as well as the subject of the critical monograph Proofs & Equational Love: The Poetry of Jim Johnstone by Shane Neilson and Jason Guriel. He has won several awards including a CBC Literary Award, Matrix Magazine’s LitPop Award, The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Currently, Johnstone is the Poetry Editor at Palimpsest Press, and an Associate Editor at Representative Poetry Online.
You Might Also Like
Buy in Print
To get this book in print, order from your favourite indie bookseller, or
buy online from our distributor, UTP »