Meta D Jones

Interests

Twentieth- and twenty-first-century American poetry and poetics, especially in relationship to gender, sexuality and performance studies; African-American literature, criticism and theory; textual studies; jazz; gender and sexuality studies; visual culture studies.

Biography

Meta DuEwa Jones is an Associate Professor in English and African and African Diaspora Studies.  She is the author of The Muse is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to the Spoken Word (University of Illinois Press, 2011): http://www.go.illinois.edu/s11jones. The Muse is Music highlights the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality within the jazz tradition and its legacy in hip hop.  The book focuses on musical, visual, oral and technological performance with a special focus on poets involved in contemporary venues for black writing such as the Dark Room Collective and the Cave Canem Foundation.  Jones’s articles, interviews, and poetry have been published in Souls, Callaloo, The Writer’s Chronicle, American Book Review, The Ringing Ear, and Rattle, among others.  She has co-edited special issues for MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) and African American Review.  Jones is Co-Director of the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies,; the 2011-12 Symposia focuses on Poets & Scholars.   Jones’s current s projects include a book length manuscript exploring poems about visual art by writers such as Natasha Trethewey, and text-painting by artists such as Glenn Ligon.  She is also completing a chapbook of poems about the life and music of Alice Coltrane entitled: Timbrel and Harp.

Jones teaches courses on African American literature and literary theory with a special emphasis on its connections to other art forms, especially in terms of formal innovation in jazz, hip hop, and visual cultural studies. 

Recent Publications:

The Muse is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to the Spoken Word (University of Illinois Press, 2011): http://www.go.illinois.edu/s11jones

Edited Collections:

Special Issue: "Multi-Ethnic Poetics," MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States, 35.2, Summer 2010. (Co-editor, with Keith Leonard)

Paul L. Dunbar 40^th Anniversary Issue, African American Review  41.2, Summer 2007. (Co-editor, with Shelly Fisher Fishkin, Gavin Jones, Arnold Rampersad, and Richard Yarborough)

Articles:

“Introduction:  Verse Center:  Form, Multiplicity, and Subjectivity in Multi-Ethnic Poetics” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States  35.2, Summer 2010: 7-15.

"Descent and Transcendence in African American Poetry: Identity, Experience, Form," Rattle: Poetry for the 21^st Century  31, Summer 2009: 81-90. http://www.rattle.com/poetry/2009/12/descent-and-transcendence-by-meta-duewa-jones/

"Reading Race, Reading Rivers: The Future of Black Aesthetics and Poetics," Mixed Blood 2,  Summer 2007: 16-32.

Review Essay:

"Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment," Review Essay of Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry by African Americans, Eds. Aldon Nielsen and Laurie Ramey; American Book Review  28.2, January/February 2007: 3-5.

Interviews:

"Reveling in Fluidity, Resisting Dichotomies: An Interview with Barbara Jane Reyes and Matthew Shenoda," MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States  35.2, Summer 2010: 127-145. (with Keith Leonard)

"Who Is the Self in Language? / Rooted in Language,": An Interview with Elizabeth Alexander," The Writer’s Chronicle, The Association of Writing Programs (AWP), 39.2, October/November 2006: 28-36 Reprinted in Elizabeth Alexander, Power & Possibility: Essays, Reviews, and Interviews, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007. http://www.elizabethalexander.net/interviews.html#Interview_01

Poems:

"Come On In My Kitchen, Bessie," PMS: Poem/Memoir/Story  8, Spring 2008: 38.

"Black Hymnal," "Graphs: Photos From A Traveler," in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Nikky Finney, ed., Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2007: 102-103; and 322-324.

Awards and Fellowships:

Jones has received fellowships from the Mellon, Rockefeller, and Woodrow Wilson foundations.