Seaborn Jones (poet)

Seaborn Jones (1942 - 2014) was an American poet.[1] He was the author of several books of poetry.

Life and writing

Jones was born in Macon, Georgia in 1942. He was named after a family forebearer, 19th-century Congressman Seaborn Jones.

He was a former United States Marine.[2]

Jones was published in the Chattahoochee Review, New York Quarterly, Pearl, River Styx, Rockhurst Review, Southern Poetry Review, Bogg, Poetry New Zealand, Studio One, Wilshire Review, Louisiana Review and numerous other journals, including translations of his work for European publications. His poems have been anthologized in 80 on the 80s (Ashland Poetry Press, 1990), Scorched Hands (Pariah Press), Chester H. Jones Foundation National Poetry Contest Winners 1993, and in Java Monkey Speaks Anthology 3 in 2008.

Jones described his poems as "architectural," explaining: "I write down the mood or phrase in a notebook and build on it. Some poems seem to just roll out with no effort. I can only assume that these poems have been incubating in my unconscious and have percolated to the conscious. Everything requires rewriting."[3]

I lean more toward Democritus' view that poetry is "traced to the poet's invocation with the Muse" than Pindar's view that "poetry is an acquired skill." My problem is that I don't know where my Muse is half the time. It's like being married to someone who says she's going to the store, then disappears for days only to return with no explanation, then wanders off again.

— Seaborn Jones, 2009., [3]

Recognition

Seaborn Jones received the Georgia Author of the Year Award in poetry in 1998[3] for his book X-Ray Movies.[4]

Jones received three International Merit Awards from Atlanta Review.[4]

He won the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, and was selected as the 1991 Alan Collins Scholar in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.[4]

Online magazine PoetryNet made him its Poet of the Month in July 2009.[3]

In 2010 Mercer University Press awarded him the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry for his manuscript, Going Farther into the Woods than the Woods Go. The citation accompanying the award read: "Unlike any poet writing in the South, Seaborn Jones maintains a figurative connection to surrealism, one of the essential pathways of subjectivity in American Art."[5]

Publications
  • Drowning from the Inside Out Cherry Valley, NY; Cherry Valley Editions, 1981. Afterword by William Dickey. ISBN 978-0-916156-52-7
  • X-Ray Movies Georgia Arts Council, (1988/1998?)
  • Lost Keys Valdosta, GA: Snake Nation Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-9638364-4-1
  • Getaway Car in Reverse Steam Iron Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1-4243-1520-8
  • Black Champagne Middle Georgia College.
  • Going Farther into the Woods than the Woods Go Mercer U P, 2011.

Except where noted, bibliographic information courtesy SeabornJones.com.[4]

Discography

References
  1. Obituary
  2. Seaborn Jones, "Visiting Chagall," Biography, Opium Magazine, Web, Apr. 27, 2011.
  3. "Poet of the Month: Seaborn Jones," July 2009, PoetryNet.org, Web, Apr. 26, 2011.
  4. SeabornJones.com, Web, Apr. 26, 2011.
  5. "2010 Book Award Winners," Mercer University Press, MUPress.org, Web, Apr. 28, 2011.
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