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 winnerPatricia Spears Jones interrogates the necessity and fragility of human bonds: 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 locationalways 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, inju