Apocalyptic Narrative And Other Poems: A Poignant American Poetry Collection―Personal and Political Landscapes, Finding Joy

by Rodney Jones

Apocalyptic Narrative and Other Poems offers a poignant look at the American landscape: factories, restaurants, farms, empty fallout shelters, glorified malls, and transfigured filling stations scattered across the land. This collection oscillates from the personal to the political, from the religious to the secular, never losing sight of the possibility of joy.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Jamey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last third of the book is much better than the rest, and excellent.

[B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally I put this down as about 3.5 stars but with a months' reflection I feel it's better than that. I found this utterly randomly at a library book sale in this upscale port town and bought it because it was a dollar and everything about the cover enchanted me. The name of Rodney Jones was completely unknown to me. I read it and found it completely beautiful. Another review here mentions the poems get better and better as you go on through the book and I do somewhat agree, meaningful language becomes more and more concentrated and stacked and every word, everywhere you look. The poem about the chair and the woman, writing this now I forget the title, the chair outside, that was great. The poem about the bridge and the drowning family and that boy. The best to me was the titular poem, six parts and incredibly jammed with visionary grime. This desperate humanist poem. This tender poem. This harsh poem. It really was everything.

The collection deals a lot with the idea of truth, what is truth, what is THE truth, is poetry a lie, is a poet a lie or a liar, there's a difference, what constitutes a lie and is it factual untruth? Can something that never happened be told and be a truth? Can feelings or ideas be true? Can you lie and tell the truth at the same time? Can you tell the truth through the body of telling a lie? Is a poet the truth? I don't know and Jones reckons with this constantly throughout the collection. He seems pretty honest to me.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reread.