Allen Morris Jones has published widely across a variety of forms, from novels to children’s books to a highly regarded treatise on the ethics of hunting. This is his first full-length collection of poetry. “These poems,” Jones writes in the Afterword, “as far as I can tell now, are about late-life fatherhood, they’re about aging and mortality, they’re about trying to see clearly. They’re about trying to discover what I think. They’re exercises in self-pity and self-absorption. They are coins tossed off the back of a train. They are the 4:00 am rants of an insomniac and they are the prissy, curated bonsai trees of a pompous little nitpicker. They’re doorstops you trip over and Rorschach oil spills you slide across. Most of all, though, they’re the rubberized ceiling straps you grab onto when the bus lurches away from the curb.”
Book Information
Dimensions: 6 x 9
Price: $16.95
Release Date: October 15, 2023
Praise for Mumblecusser
“The poem ‘Prelude to a Polka’ opens with, ‘I spent most of the morning / pounding at a poem, tapping time / with my fists, nodding to a beat, / counting feet with my fingers, / going for Gershwin but mostly / getting garbage.’ Well don’t believe that for a minute. Allen Jones’s Mumblecusser is an impressive debut book of poems. In these pages a boy has turned into a young man who’s turned into a father on his way toward dust. These poems make you stop and think at every turn-carefully built and a joy to read.”
— Michael Earl Craig
“Allen Jones lets you in. You are welcome to take a look inside him in these poems that reveal his view of life-the recognition and power of connection. From his family to the stars, from the cacophony of humanity to the quietude of water, he looks keenly, feels deeply, and renders his observations in smart, humorous, and heartfelt poems that celebrate this life in this place at this time. In short: this is a sweet collection of ‘Montana’ poems, a motherfucking humdinger! But why ‘Montana’ poems? The language and the landscape, the creatures that inhabit them, but mainly it’s the voice of someone whose people are in the ground: ‘And goddamn ain’t that just the way it goes.’”
— Mark Gibbons
“Jones’s ability to discover the extraordinary within the ordinary–the profound within the profane–yet never be tempted to stray into hyperbole, is reminiscent of past pillars of Western poetry: Jim Harrison and Richard Hugo. Jones shares their deep-seeing eyes and deep-feeling souls…”
— Big Sky Journal
About Allen Morris Jones
Widely published across genres and forms, Allen Morris Jones is the author of three novels, a Spur Award winning children’s book, a highly regarded look at the ethics of hunting, a collection of poetry, and more than 100 published personal essays, profiles, short stories, and other incidental pieces. He has worked as a magazine editor (Big Sky Journal), as an acquisitions editor (Lyons Press / Globe Pequot Press), small press publisher, and as a university Communications Director. He lives in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife and son.
