Spotlight series #94: Jon Cone
Curated by Canadian writer, editor and publisher rob mclennan, the “spotlight” series appears the first Monday of every month.
STATEMENT
I grew up in Richmond Hill, Ont., though I was born in Charfield, England. After graduating from Richmond Hill High School, I attended Seneca College in Toronto, for one year, then moved on to University of Western Ontario, in London. While at Western, I took a course with Don McKay on Contemporary Poetry and attended a special lecture by Northrop Frye. McKay was inspiring, Frye wasn’t. Always I was reading: Robert Bringhurst, Al Purdy, Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, David McFadden. Others, too: Roo Borson, P.K. Page, David Donnell, Norman Levine, Robert Kroetsch, Robert Bly, Jim Harrison, Raymond Carver, Gordon Lish, Bukowski. The best rejection letter I received was from the Canadian literary newsletter 3 Cent Pulp. It was a dense critique of my submission, typed, on yellow foolscap. I remember one line in particular went something like this: “Mr. Cone, you are squandering your strengths writing shit.” A fair estimation, I recall. The editor proceeded to recommend I read Neruda, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and a few others. Which I did. I kept the letter for many years, until one day I threw it out. I write the way I do because I believe there is no other way for me to write. I do not avoid form, though form does not come easily. A few poems of mine, in fact, are written in traditional poetic form. However, I am more comfortable, for better or worse, exploring poetry in the free verse tradition, employing accidentally and incidentally formal techniques as the weather allows. Poetry does many things; in my case I think of poetry as a means to explore the meaning and mystery of existence by written or spoken language. Often when people ask me what a poem of mine means, I am not being difficult when I reply that I do not know: much like a painting, a poem is its own meaning. Along the way I have published poetry chapbooks, a book of plays, a comic book script, and occasional reviews. And I managed to get my MFA in poetry from Vermont College in Montpelier, VT. There I studied with Mary Ruefle and Jean Valentine, two brilliant poets, both inspirational. I am writing a play currently and gathering notes for a long prose work, as well as continuing to write essays.
The impetus for the first poem is a comment my father once made about a bicycle I had, the second poem comes from my fascination with chess — of which it should be said I am a terrible player.
TWO POEMS
A HISTORY OF STURMEY-ARCHER GEARS
FIRE SERMON
Jon Cone is a Canadian writer currently living in Iowa City. He’s published chapbooks, a collaborative collection of short plays, a comic book script, and for seven years edited a literary journal. He can be followed @JonCone on the site formerly known as Twitter.
