Elegy for the southern drawl

Exulting in the speech of his native Alabama, Rodney Jones's new poems combine satire and ode, formal lament and ribald joke. Now, in his sixth book, Jones extends the emotional and stylistic range that has brought him such honors as the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Jean Stein Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He writes of football and feminism, of DDT and family, of crows and sex, of ink and raccoons and perpetual motion machines.

In many of these poems the southern drawl lives forever, riding on the tide of regional language, poking fun yet delighting in it.