THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501200088
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
IT'S A POET-EAT-POET world out there.
Just ask Richard Jones. He stuns his poetry students at DePaul University in Chicago each semester by telling them 14 million Americans out there consider themselves poets.
Unpublished poets. Poor poets. Frustrated poets.
``The poetry world is ferociously competitive,'' Jones explained in a telephone interview earlier this week. ``It's virtually impossible to get a book of poetry published.''
Impossible, maybe. But not for Jones who published three collections of his poetry in the past nine years and is considered one of the top contemporary poets in America.
``When you do get a book of poetry published, they have to print them in lots of 1,000,'' he said with some exasperation. ``It's ironic. Everyone is writing poetry. Very few people read it.''
Jones will be reading poetry - his own - on Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts as he concludes a coast-to-coast poetry reading tour with excerpts of his latest book, ``A Perfect Time.''
It's a homecoming for the Norfolk native who graduated from Maury High School in 1971 and the University of Virginia. He still has family in the area: His parents live in Sandbridge, his sister (poet Shelly Wagner) in Norfolk.
``It's funny, they say a prophet is never accepted in his own land,'' Jones said, laughing. ``When I come home it's never `Here is the poet.' It's `Oh, here's Richard.' ''
Jones remembers having the soul of a poet when he was just in high school. As a student, Jones said he yearned to write poetry but didn't know where or how to start.
``I had no role models; I thought all poets were dead,'' he said. ``I had no acquaintance with contemporary poetry.''
That's why poetry reading is so important, says the 41-year-old newlywed. (His wife is a Chicago psychiatrist. They married last summer.)
Although he teaches at DePaul, Jones considers himself a poet first, a college professor second.
For a long time, Jones was too modest, too insecure to call himself a poet. Until a few years ago he simply described himself as a teacher.
Teaching creative writing and poetry is what he does to pay the bills.
Poetry he does for love.
Jones composes hundreds of poems. Reams of poems. Poems that he never submits for publication. He writes his poetry first in longhand, then he selects the ones that might make a good book. Those he types into a computer, and sends off to his publisher.
That Jones has had three collections of poetry published is a testament to how good he is. Most poets feel fortunate to have a single poem published in a literary journal.
``He's wonderful,'' gushed Michael Weigers, managing editor of Copper Canyon Press, a poetry-only publishing company based in Washington. ``He's not flashy. He's not a self-promoter. Richard's poems are accessible. Deceptively simple.
``There is a lot of music in Richard Jones' poetry.''
Jones pledges not to sing at the Art Center on Sunday, but concedes that good poetry is musical.
``There's definitely a symphonic quality to poetry, a cadence, a rhythm,'' he said. ``If there is a problem with the general public and poetry, it's that they rarely heard poems read aloud. They never get to feel the music.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by Copper Canyon Press
Richard Jones...
by CNB