Desert Elegy: Poems by Danell Jones
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A finalist for the New Women’s Voices Prize in Poetry, Desert Elegy was published by Finishing Lines Press in a handmade, limited edition chapbook.
Praise for Desert Elegy
Desert Elegy portrays the creatures that inhabit and depart from the desert: an appaloosa colt, a favorite cat, a beloved father, an infant. In this world of the Mojave Desert, Jones doesn’t turn away from despair, but she allows us to see new life emerging from loss. Even those about to depart carry pockets full of seeds.
In these spare, elegant poems, Danell Jones mourns our own fading and frailties, yet challenges us to “let the years alone,” to rejoice in the fact that “we are alive in the most ordinary way.”
These are brave poems, urging us to “lean into” the desert’s harsh aridity. Here death is beautiful; here beauty cannot die. In Desert Elegy, Jones combines psychology and landscape with a spare hand and perfectly suited diction.