J, Laura (Riding) Jackson to June Jordan

At the official Web site administered by her estate, you can read selected poems and stories from her books, including an excerpt from Rational Meaning and her poem, “Nor Is It Written.” Her papers are archived at the Cornell University Library.

Jacobsen described herself as “a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist,” served as Poetry Consultant to the U.S. Library of Congress (old title for Poet Laureate) in the 1970’s, and died in 2003 at the age of 94.

Larry Jaffe was host of the “poetic license” and other performance series around LA and served as our Los Angeles area Museletter correspondent. He is the author of Unprotected Poetry and has a spiffy Web site of his own.

Brothah Jeff joins and heals communities (that’s plural, meaning more than one) with his spirit-filled words—so says Ta’Shia Asanti, who served as our Rocky Mountain Museletter correspondent. He is founder and executive director of Brother Jeff’s, a spot which has long since become the hub of cultural expression in Denver.

“Ornithomancer” Jerry H. Jenkins is an amazing formalist, whose work has been published in The Formalist and has placed numerous times in its Howard Nemerov Sonnet Competition. He is one of the three Weird Sonneteers and he has two chapbooks, Avian and Garden of the Sun.

Beat hipster, playful surrealist, trumpeter and jazz poet Ted Joans was born on the 4th of July, 1928, on a riverboat in Cairo, Illinois. Recollection Books has a Ted Joans page with a brief bio, bits of poetry, photographs, book covers and links.

Black consciousness, musicality and surrealist whimsy are the elements of Ted Joans’ poetry. Jack Foley’s enlightening reviews of his selected poems, Teducation (Coffee House Press, 2000), and a limited edition chapbookk, Wow (Quarter Moon Press, 2000), appeared in Ishmael Reed’s Konch. His papers are at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

In his last years, Ted Joans lived in Vancouver, British Columbia with his companion, painter Laura Corsiglia. Their joint site at Empty Mirror Books was under construction at the time of his death in May, 2003.

Denis Johnson lives in Idaho and is well known as a novelist. His collected poems are known as Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly (HarperCollins, 1996). You can read eight of his poems, including “A Poem about Baseballs,” at the Poetry Foundation Web site.

LKJ is the world’s premier (first and best) dub poet released an album of readings recorded live in 1996, and in 2002 became only the second living poet and the first black poet to have his work published in Penguin’s Modern Classics series, Mi Revalueshanary Fren. Furious Green Thoughts/Perfect Sound Forever has published an interesting interview with LKJ by Billy Bob Hargus.

Best known as a dramatist (his first play had Shakespeare in its cast), Jonson was also a gifted lyric poet and author of the still-familiar “Song To Cecilia”: “Drink to me only with thine eyes...”

June Jordan (1936 - 2002) was poet, activist, political essayist, teacher at UC Berkeley and founder of Poetry for the People. Her remarkable life was documented on KQED’s “Speaking Freely ,” where you can read and listen to several of her poems). She died in 2002 of breast cancer and will be sorely missed.

June Jordan’s “Poems to Rebuild Kosovo” were featured here at About Poetry in 1999. Her readings and conversations as a Kelly Writer’s House Fellow at Penn in 2001 were Webcast and are archived online at Professor Al Filreis’ contemporary poetry site.