Alabama focuses on a boy from a rural, fundamentalist community who becomes a pacifist, feminist, and existentialist poet. Labyrinth, meditation, fable, and peasant poem, formed from interleaved strands of prose vignettes and lineated poetry, this collection is at once a tale of cultural exile and familial loyalty, and an unflinching look at regional shame that doubles as a love story, all expressed with the intimate voice and vision of Rodney Jones.
"Rodney Jones is perhaps the supreme example we have of the southern human person speaking in American poetry."
Kate Daniels
"Jones has found an inevitable, pared-down, utterly original way of telling his story in the context of the culture he comes from. This is a lovely book, for its humor as well as its compassion."
Alan Williamson
"If there is a way to hold on, to recover some part of what's lost, and grasp-for even a fleeting moment-the ineffable, this marvelous book is it."
