The Editor
Richard Jones is the author of several book of poems, including Country of Air,
At Last We Enter Paradise, A Perfect Time, and 48 Questions. His most recent book, The Blessing, received the Midland Authors Award for Poetry for 2000. Anthologized in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems and Billy Collins's Poetry 180, his poems have been featured on National Public Radio, BBC Radio, and The Writer's Almanac. His most recent work, the compact disc Body and Soul, discusses the art of poetry. Editor of Poetry East since its founding in 1979, he is a professor of English and the director of Creative Writing at DePaul University.

The Blessing: New and Selected Poems by Richard Jones

"The Blessing gathers under one cover Richard Jones's insightfully candid and supremely accessible poetry, providing a comprehensive overview survey of this superb and uniquely talented poet."
— The Midwest Book Review

"Jones's work reminds us that the ordinary is extraordinary, that the real miracle is being human, and no amount of wordplay or flourish will make the beauty any more beautiful, or the terror any more terrible."
— Society of Midland Authors Award Citation

"Jones has courage, and its important to note that he's had it since the beginning. These poems
illustrate again and again, that we get what we're willing
to give: patience, attention, forgiveness, love."
— Rain Taxi

"Jones can be stunning, effortlessly finding the right tone. This is instinctive poetry, combining bluntness with reserve...that sense of balance, equanamity in the face of calamity, gives [the poetry] some of its considerable power."
— The Village Voice

The Blessing is published by Copper Canyon Press.
It is available in bookstores or through Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org   (ISBN 1-55659-143-8)

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