Rodney Jones is one of America's most distinguished younger poets. His three volumes of verse have demonstrated growing mastery of his medium. Peer recognition has come in the form of the Lavan Award in Poetry from the Academy of American Poets (1986), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1988), the Jean Stein Prize in poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1989), and the National Book Critics Circle Award (1990).

Jones was born on 11 February 1950, to Lavon and Wilda Owens Jones in Falkville, Alabama. The young Jones was reared in rural northern Alabama in an environment combining agrarian and urban cultures. His father was first a farmer then an employee in a plant that manufactured metal tubes. Both parents encouraged their children's ambition and interests. For Rodney, those ambitions were diverse: as a boy he aspired, variously, to be a professional athlete, a United States senator, and a Dickensian novelist. He...