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Vessel
The imagination of a girl, the retelling of family stories, and the unfolding of a rich and often painful history: Parneshia Jones’ debut collection explores the intersections of these elements of experience with refreshing candor and metaphorical purpose. A child of the South speaking in the rhythms of Chicago, Jones knits “a human quilt” with herself at the center. She relates everything from the awkward trip to Marshall Fields with her mother to buy her first bra to the late whiskey-infused nights of her father’s world. In the South, “lard sizzles a sermon from the stove”; in Chicago, we feast on an “opera of peppers and pimento.” Jones intertwines the stories of her own family with those of historical Black figures, including Marvin Gaye and Josephine Baker. Affectionate, dynamic, and uncommonly observant, these poems mine the richness of history to create a map of identity and influence.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 7, 2015
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166 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 28, 2019
excerpt from
STILL MEMORY by Parneshia Jones
"Photograph: Starkville, Mississippi, 1940
Six chocolate truffle girls line up,
holding hands.
Two with wide mouths missing baby teeth,
three with ponytails, two with afros,
all dressed in homemade skirts and coveralls.
Their bare butterscotch feet
gray in the picture but still sweet."
Scheduled to facilitate a workshop in Detroit titled “People & Places: A Creative History of Family and Home,” a few weeks ago, I wanted to begin putting together a small “anthology” of examples to share with participants now and in the future. Parneshia Jones came on my radar when I learned that she often writes about family and is a member of the Affrilacian Poets, a collective of poets of color from Appalachia.
I admit to having a taste for “home & hearth" poems---maybe because they remind me that I have kindred spirits in the world, people who mix memories of hands that till the land, stitch homemade quilts, and serve hunks of buttermilk cornbread into our love affair with language, learning, and literature. I tend to lean into poetry that combines references to our multiple ways of being in the world, without necessarily privileging the intellectual over the emotional, the sensory, the physical, and the spiritual.
In Vessel ----Parneshia Jones' debut collection---we get a varied sampling of verses that pay homage to origins in name, family, geography, people, concerns, and circumstances along the spectrum of our connective tissue: mothers, fathers, and men who step in to be fathers; lovers; food, drink, music, literary predecessors, childhood, first kisses, and friends; the missing, and the dead; Marvin Gaye, and more.
This collection is tender, muscular, and intelligent. I look forward to hearing/reading more of Parneshia Jones’ unique voice in the future.
STILL MEMORY by Parneshia Jones
"Photograph: Starkville, Mississippi, 1940
Six chocolate truffle girls line up,
holding hands.
Two with wide mouths missing baby teeth,
three with ponytails, two with afros,
all dressed in homemade skirts and coveralls.
Their bare butterscotch feet
gray in the picture but still sweet."
Scheduled to facilitate a workshop in Detroit titled “People & Places: A Creative History of Family and Home,” a few weeks ago, I wanted to begin putting together a small “anthology” of examples to share with participants now and in the future. Parneshia Jones came on my radar when I learned that she often writes about family and is a member of the Affrilacian Poets, a collective of poets of color from Appalachia.
I admit to having a taste for “home & hearth" poems---maybe because they remind me that I have kindred spirits in the world, people who mix memories of hands that till the land, stitch homemade quilts, and serve hunks of buttermilk cornbread into our love affair with language, learning, and literature. I tend to lean into poetry that combines references to our multiple ways of being in the world, without necessarily privileging the intellectual over the emotional, the sensory, the physical, and the spiritual.
In Vessel ----Parneshia Jones' debut collection---we get a varied sampling of verses that pay homage to origins in name, family, geography, people, concerns, and circumstances along the spectrum of our connective tissue: mothers, fathers, and men who step in to be fathers; lovers; food, drink, music, literary predecessors, childhood, first kisses, and friends; the missing, and the dead; Marvin Gaye, and more.
This collection is tender, muscular, and intelligent. I look forward to hearing/reading more of Parneshia Jones’ unique voice in the future.
December 28, 2025
Heartfelt and honest poems speaking through the voices of the ever-present past.
April 12, 2015
The comparison to Brooks (one of my favorite poets) on the back cover is apt. These poems can skip and dance like childhood games of hopscotch. Like Brooks she can paint beautiful, honest, awkward portraits of childhood. But watch out - in poems like Milk and Honey the real emotion comes out and she wrecks you.
September 12, 2021
I really enjoyed these, my favorite being 'Milk and Honey: Marvin Gaye' Some of my favorite lines from this collection of poems include:
"To love us, you must come armed with an iron soul."
"Love the broken wings, spoiled air, the swollen hearts that have forgotten how to dream."
"I try on all of my woman/and write myself a truth."
"To love us, you must come armed with an iron soul."
"Love the broken wings, spoiled air, the swollen hearts that have forgotten how to dream."
"I try on all of my woman/and write myself a truth."
February 28, 2016
A powerful book of poems about identity, womanhood, and legacy (both the immediate-familial and the legacy of an entire people.) As a woman of color that struggles with all of those issues, there were quite a few pieces in here that definitely took my breath away.
April 11, 2022
A powerful book of poems with great range. Very accessible stories about ancestors and the self. The poet Parneshia (a few fascinating poems about her name) makes the points about events without any preachiness. Very accessible poems and stories that touch the heart. About the children killed in Atlanta called Georgia on My Mind: “Children become ancestors/
in the Georgia night.”
Vessel is very much worth reading.
Excerpt from: "Vessel: Poems" by Parneshia Jones. Scribd.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Read this book on Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/book/353089564
in the Georgia night.”
Vessel is very much worth reading.
Excerpt from: "Vessel: Poems" by Parneshia Jones. Scribd.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Read this book on Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/book/353089564
July 28, 2020
The poems were powerful. Some were windows and others mirrors. I met Jones a few years ago when these poems came out and finally finished reading all of them. They are as relevant today as they were when she wrote them. Full of colorful imagery and tastes and sounds.
August 19, 2015
Beautiful.
December 22, 2017
Haiku for Parneshia Jones
Exquisite wordsmith
Who with wit, craft, and shimmer
Creates poem gems
Exquisite wordsmith
Who with wit, craft, and shimmer
Creates poem gems
January 31, 2019
Autocorrect, my fav
January 18, 2021
This is one of those books you get from the library and immediately want to purchase because you know you’re going to read this over and over again.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews