Kingdom Of the Instant

Many of the poems in Kingdom of the Instant attend to a particular moment — to the individual existing in one place at the time life is lived. Some of them, like “Keeping Time,” are urgent, even ominous (“To be there with it, tock to its tick, mud / to its chink”). In others, the approach to the instant is dilatory, relaxed, as in one of the long poems, “Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical” (“Let loose. Lists into ashes. Tasks into stones”). The poet also addresses natural history and the environment; religiosity, the history and encumbrances of class, regionalism, and the American South; and the act of making poetry. There are homages to a number of masters, ranging from Wallace Stevens to Mississippi John Hurt, but concrete references give way to the fleeting impression, the given moment, the kingdom of the instant that Rodney Jones so strongly evokes. He is, line by line, sound by sound, at the top of his form.