CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Rodney Jones (poet)

American poet

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ7356966 ↗
Source-derived summary

Rodney Glenn Jones (born 1950) is an American poet and retired professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

He was born and reared near Falkville, Alabama, gained a B.A. in 1971 at the University of Alabama and an M.F.A. at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1973. He taught poetry at high schools in Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia from 1974 to 1978 and then became a writer in residence at Virginia Intermont College from 1979 to 1984. He was finally appointed Professor of English at the Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He retired in 2012.

Jones was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award. His other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1985), the Peter I.B. Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Southeast Booksellers Association Award, and a Harper Lee Award.

Bibliography

Going Ahead Looking Back (1978)

The Story They Told Us of Light (1980)

The Unborn (1985)

Transparent Gestures (1989)

Apocalyptic Narrative (1993)

Things That Happen Once (1996)

Elegy for the Southern Drawl (1999)

Kingdom of the Instant: Poems (2004)

Salvation Blues (2006) (winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, shortlisted for the 2007 International Griffin Poetry Prize)

Imaginary Logic (2011)

Village Prodigies (2017)

References

External links

Griffin Poetry Prize biography

Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip

Profile on Blackbird online journal Web site

Announcement of Rodney Jones winning prestigious 2007 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in Southern Illinois University Carbondale News

The winter of his content - interview with Rodney Jones in seMissiourian.com News

Rodney Jones, "An Absence I Know I Won't Reclaim". Southern Spaces, 22 January 2009.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Rodney Jones (poet)” as american poet. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1971, 1973, 1974—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1950-02-11. The account is most persuasive where Rodney, Jones and poet can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american poet. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7356966. VIAF identifies the subject as 68976997. The Library of Congress control number is n79099520. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 1971, 1973 and 1974.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Rodney Jones (poet)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Rodney Jones (poet) primary sources, Rodney Jones (poet) archive and Rodney research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Rodney Jones (poet)”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Rodney Jones (poet)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.