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The Beloved Community
Dedicated to friends, fellow artists, and resilient working people, The Beloved Community sees Jones at her best as she writes toward and in search of all that connects and disconnects us.In her fifth poetry collection, The Beloved Community, Jackson Poetry Prize winner Patricia Spears Jones interrogates the necessity and fragility of human sensual, familial, societal. From lyric to elegy, far-reaching poems use word play and metaphor to create richly textured landscapes in search of community. As we traverse delis, laundromats, and the Brooklyn block where morning glories grow “leaves plump as Italian cookies,” poems about poverty, art, and community, become poems about location—always the city is alive and breathing. Later, the collection widens its view, leaving Brooklyn to visit the consequences of violence across America.
From the Atlanta Child Murders to the murder of Nia Wilson, The Beloved Community is fearless in its rage and hope as it explores what disrupts— oppression, injustice, loss, grief, and a fraught sense of the erotic. Largely dedicated to musicians, artists, and fellow poets, Jones acknowledges art as tools for both care and resistance, recognizing that “voice is our greatest magic.” Imbued with history, laced with tenderness, and channeling a long tradition of the blues in African American poetics, The Beloved Community speaks with spark and urgency.
From the Atlanta Child Murders to the murder of Nia Wilson, The Beloved Community is fearless in its rage and hope as it explores what disrupts— oppression, injustice, loss, grief, and a fraught sense of the erotic. Largely dedicated to musicians, artists, and fellow poets, Jones acknowledges art as tools for both care and resistance, recognizing that “voice is our greatest magic.” Imbued with history, laced with tenderness, and channeling a long tradition of the blues in African American poetics, The Beloved Community speaks with spark and urgency.
- GenresPoetry
90 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 26, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 18, 2024
This is exactly the kind of book that I am craving right now. Spears Jones writes musically and beautifully about her community - the tendrils that reach out - and the love that extends across state and other borders, transcending time. She is an amazing wordsmith - a line in "Trophic Cascade", for example, runs "Air Jordans, Air America, Air apparent, Air regardless" and while this kind of wordplay can simply be clever, in Spears Jones' capable hands, it is always fresh and necessary, never gratuitous. While she mostly writes of community and from a birds eye lens, there are also more personal offerings, such as "Lee Breuer dies and I clean my stove top". This will most definitely be in my section of favorite poetry books.
February 26, 2024
These multi-layered poems go everywhere life is--to the summer of the Atlanta Child Murders, to a broken tooth, a group of urban gleaners, a laundromat, anywhere a community might gather. These poems can withstand multiple readings--there's always something more to discover within them. Jones's perceptions are fearless, clear-eyed, and compassionate; her ear is exquisite. Keep a reference work at hand--keeping up with Jones's references will deepen your experience. It's good to see this collection coming from Copper Canyon. The Beloved Community is an important work, a collection of poems that represent life in the United States, its beauty and its turbulence.
January 26, 2025
Better as it goes
My rating is mostly based on the last half of this book. I was tempted to put it down after the first few poems, but the quality seemed to improve as I read. I'm glad I kept with it.
My rating is mostly based on the last half of this book. I was tempted to put it down after the first few poems, but the quality seemed to improve as I read. I'm glad I kept with it.
November 24, 2024
A pleasant and readable journey across communities and topics which enrich their role. Tribute pieces for Aretha and others.
July 24, 2025
Note to self: remember the rhythm and word play
February 12, 2026
A Poet's Beloved Community
"The Beloved Community" was an ideal famously articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, while the term was used considerably earlier by the American philosopher Josiah Royce (1850 -- 1916). My interest in these thinkers and in the Beloved Community prompted me to read this book of poems "The Beloved Community" (2023) by Patricia Spears Jones (b. 1955), (Neither King nor Royce are mentioned in the volume.) A poet, playwright, anthologist, educator, and cultural activist, Spears Jones received the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. This book is her fifth published collection of poetry.
It is valuable to read the title poem of the collection for an example of Spears Jones's poetry and for a way to understand her concept of the Beloved Community.
"The Bangladeshi man walks slowly, so slowly
I know he is ill. He shuffles a broom about
The laundromat, than sits in front of the largest dryer.
Then a Latina comes in frantic pointing at the flier posted
on the laundromat's window.
"What happened?" she asks.
The attendant says -- "She died."
"But when, how?"
"Two weeks ago. Two weeks," he says.
He knows only this. Dead, two weeks.
The Memorial is for later in the day, in a place
Far from Halsey. The flier's crisp image of a Black woman's face
Smiling, young looking, but she was not young. "Two weeks."
La senora shakes her head, her purple-streaked
Hair tamed by her sadness.
"She always said hello. She was always smiling."
She says this to me. I nod and try to smile with her memory.
She looks once again at the image, black and white, utilitarian
On the glass surface. Then walks out onto the sidewalk.
Undone by new grief."
The poem is set in a humble setting, a laundromat, and recounts a conversation between a Bangladeshi man and a Latina woman about the recent death of the attendant at the laundromat, a Black woman, and the Memorial, far from the scene, planned in her memory. They are saddened by the woman's death and remember her kindness. The poem is of a particular place and features two people of different backgrounds coming together to mourn a third person of another background. The "Beloved Community" of the poem begins in particularity but has a potentially broad reach.
In the volume, which consists of two parts together with an introductory poem, Spears Jones explores both particularity and breadth. On the whole, the poems work best when there focus is narrow. Many of the poems explore small scenes in Brooklyn streets, homes, or business, similar to the laundromat. These poems include "Morning Glory", "Hannah's Cigar Box (memory & invention) and "Walking on Avenue A on the Tompkins Square Park Side". Other poems focus on a single person including, for example Aretha Franklin or Geri Allen (1957 -- 2017) an American jazz pianist and composer. Some poems address broad social themes such as "Green Ribbons", which commemorates the Atlanta child murders that occurred from 1979-- 1981, and "Fred Hampton Born this Day", which commemorates the Chicago police murder in 1969 of the Chairman of the Black Panther Party, age 21. The tone of the poems ranges from thoughtful and reflective to strident and angry. The poems are short, largely unrhymed and rhythmical with many allusions to the blues, other music, and poetry.
The poems were written over the course of years and many were first published in literary journals. Thus, they were not initially conceived as reflecting upon the specific theme of Beloved Community. Still, a poetic vision emerges from this collection. Spears Jones stresses, for me, the specificity of the Beloved Community in relations between people, friends and neighbors, which then expands to larger places, such as Brooklyn, and then to the United States and beyond. The vision becomes more difficult as it becomes broader and there have been many missteps along the way.
I enjoyed thinking about the Beloved Community with Spears Jones and placing it in the context of King, Royce, and others. I found the book in the local public library which is a prime example of a possible source of a neighborhood Beloved Community. The book is published by Copper Canyon Press, a non-profit independent publisher of poetry since 1972. Copper Canyon states on its website: "We believe poetry is vital to language and living."
Robin Friedman
"The Beloved Community" was an ideal famously articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, while the term was used considerably earlier by the American philosopher Josiah Royce (1850 -- 1916). My interest in these thinkers and in the Beloved Community prompted me to read this book of poems "The Beloved Community" (2023) by Patricia Spears Jones (b. 1955), (Neither King nor Royce are mentioned in the volume.) A poet, playwright, anthologist, educator, and cultural activist, Spears Jones received the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. This book is her fifth published collection of poetry.
It is valuable to read the title poem of the collection for an example of Spears Jones's poetry and for a way to understand her concept of the Beloved Community.
"The Bangladeshi man walks slowly, so slowly
I know he is ill. He shuffles a broom about
The laundromat, than sits in front of the largest dryer.
Then a Latina comes in frantic pointing at the flier posted
on the laundromat's window.
"What happened?" she asks.
The attendant says -- "She died."
"But when, how?"
"Two weeks ago. Two weeks," he says.
He knows only this. Dead, two weeks.
The Memorial is for later in the day, in a place
Far from Halsey. The flier's crisp image of a Black woman's face
Smiling, young looking, but she was not young. "Two weeks."
La senora shakes her head, her purple-streaked
Hair tamed by her sadness.
"She always said hello. She was always smiling."
She says this to me. I nod and try to smile with her memory.
She looks once again at the image, black and white, utilitarian
On the glass surface. Then walks out onto the sidewalk.
Undone by new grief."
The poem is set in a humble setting, a laundromat, and recounts a conversation between a Bangladeshi man and a Latina woman about the recent death of the attendant at the laundromat, a Black woman, and the Memorial, far from the scene, planned in her memory. They are saddened by the woman's death and remember her kindness. The poem is of a particular place and features two people of different backgrounds coming together to mourn a third person of another background. The "Beloved Community" of the poem begins in particularity but has a potentially broad reach.
In the volume, which consists of two parts together with an introductory poem, Spears Jones explores both particularity and breadth. On the whole, the poems work best when there focus is narrow. Many of the poems explore small scenes in Brooklyn streets, homes, or business, similar to the laundromat. These poems include "Morning Glory", "Hannah's Cigar Box (memory & invention) and "Walking on Avenue A on the Tompkins Square Park Side". Other poems focus on a single person including, for example Aretha Franklin or Geri Allen (1957 -- 2017) an American jazz pianist and composer. Some poems address broad social themes such as "Green Ribbons", which commemorates the Atlanta child murders that occurred from 1979-- 1981, and "Fred Hampton Born this Day", which commemorates the Chicago police murder in 1969 of the Chairman of the Black Panther Party, age 21. The tone of the poems ranges from thoughtful and reflective to strident and angry. The poems are short, largely unrhymed and rhythmical with many allusions to the blues, other music, and poetry.
The poems were written over the course of years and many were first published in literary journals. Thus, they were not initially conceived as reflecting upon the specific theme of Beloved Community. Still, a poetic vision emerges from this collection. Spears Jones stresses, for me, the specificity of the Beloved Community in relations between people, friends and neighbors, which then expands to larger places, such as Brooklyn, and then to the United States and beyond. The vision becomes more difficult as it becomes broader and there have been many missteps along the way.
I enjoyed thinking about the Beloved Community with Spears Jones and placing it in the context of King, Royce, and others. I found the book in the local public library which is a prime example of a possible source of a neighborhood Beloved Community. The book is published by Copper Canyon Press, a non-profit independent publisher of poetry since 1972. Copper Canyon states on its website: "We believe poetry is vital to language and living."
Robin Friedman
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews