Poetry offering spaces of rest

Every now and then a work of art finds you rather than your finding it.

I’m delighted to report meeting poet and professor Richard Jones, master artist and gifted author of “Stranger on Earth,” which

The Village Voice pronounced “skillful, direct, and surprisingly delicate.”

Having met Jones and read his work, I would certify that his verse is also powerful, arresting and compelling.

He teaches English at DePaul University in Chicago, where for 40 years he has also been editor of Poetry East, a journal. This year “The Bliss of Reading” will be released this month, for National Poetry Month. In it are 100 poems, one from each of the 100 editions of Poetry East. Also released this year is a volume of Jones’ own poetry, “Paris.”

In the last lines of his poem “Sonnet from the Editor,” he describes what he sees as the value of poetry with this: some have journeyed with me In the work of poetry: beauty, mercy, and peace.

And so delightfully animated is his work that it draws smiles as well as cheers.

I offer this in evidence from his book “Stranger on Earth” (Copper Canyon Press, 305 pp., $20):

After the Rain

I hurry through the early evening

down rain-washed Chicago streets,

carrying a great bouquet of flowers

upside down so the heavy weight

of so many red and yellow blooms

will not break or bend the tall stems.

The flowers are wrapped in white

paper on which a small envelope

has been taped. The aproned girl

in the florist’s shop waited, while

pen in hand I looked into eternity,

wanting to write something equal

to the flowers’ beauty, to her beauty,

then wrote my wife’s name, Laura.

Mission accomplished, I say. His good work compelled me to respond in kind:

Poetry is such relief.

It gives you time to sit with it.

And think it over, by yourself.

You can set it down and it will

Wait for you till you return.

Sometimes it changes before your

Eyes. A new perspective,

A dream suddenly extended

After a long quiet night.

It makes us mornings and quiets

Itself to rest of an evening.

People who read and write

Poetry sit back and take stock.

They raise a question and

Wait for an answer.

Suddenly we have extra

Friends.