When the Only Light Is Fire

by Saeed Jones

In his debut chapbook of poetry, Saeed Jones walks on the periphery of the South, those places on the outskirts of town, in bars after midnight, and on dangerous backroads where most people keep their heads down or look the other way. Through Texas and Tennessee, Alabama and the riverbeds of the Mississippi, these poems wrap themselves in cloaks of masks and comfort; garments we learn are flammable if we stand too close to flames.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Southern, Adult

Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, the 2020 Stonewall Book Award/Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award, and a 2020 Lambda Literary Award. He is also the author of the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Reviews

[anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

everything hurts, thanks!

[Paris (parisperusing) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saeed Jones’ debut chapbook of poetry, WHEN THE ONLY LIGHT IS FIRE, is not just a riot of the black man — but of the gay black boy caged inside him. I found sanctum in so many of these poems, among them: “Kudzu,” a hankering verse about how nothing breaks the heart like what it cannot have; “Nocturne,” in which death flexes its ubiquitous pull on the living; “Daedalus, After Icarus,” a fable of a grief-stricken father whose son dies of his own invention; and “Boy at Edge of Woods,” where boys discover fellatio as houses go up in flames. I bought this book a few days ago, and finally sat down and drank these poems whole this afternoon. I was so nourished by the poetic calm by which Jones sang the psalms of his people whilst bridging the gulf between blackness and gayness.

In “Terrible Boy,” the speaker says: “I turned the family portrait face down/ when he was on me … broke a mirror to slim/ my reflection’s waist.” It dawned on me then that I was re-reading a passage from my own youth, one I thought I’d discarded in memory. But once a boy turns for his first taste of that sweet sting, he forgets none of what transpires next: the shame permeating freshly laundered sheets; the panicked bang of a locked door; bodies knuckling under the warmth of rapture. It is a hot flash that brands us for the rest of our lives, a reminder of how far we’ve strayed, how doomed we are.

Perhaps, had I read these poems earlier in life, I would not have felt so alone, so graceless and unwanted on this anxious planet. But how fortunate am I to have survived long enough to stumble upon this body of work. I can’t wait to get my next ration of Jones’ writing with his debut memoir, HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES, out this fall, as I know it’ll be nothing short of life-saving.

If you liked my review, feel free to follow me @parisperusing on Instagram.

[Tori Heroux · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a booktube channel now! Subscribe here.

3.5 stars. This was a lovely debut chapbook, melding themes of queerness and Blackness to beautiful effect. I loved about half of these poems and found the rest so-so, and it was very short. I look forward to reading more from Jones. Wish I'd realized that these poems are about half of his collection Prelude to Bruise, as I'd have just read that.

[Red Haircrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd first come across the collection in search of a purchase to better understand a press, and the description really stood out for me. Although I was born in Germany and live in Berlin now, many of my formulative years were spend in the southern U.S. in the states of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and Louisana, and these are some of the places the poet grew up.

"Saeed Jones walks on the periphery of the South, those places on the outskirts of town, in bars after midnight, and on dangerous backroads where most people keep their heads down or look the other way...." How well I understood that description and recall many such places, such dangers!

I wanted to read the author's impressions of those places and compare them to my own, my collection CORE is forthcoming. Sometimes they were agonizingly similar based on being from a minority population and with a sexuality publicly reviled yet privately practiced so that abuse can be common of those who are not allowed to have voices.

Visceral, vivid, yet often using a minimum of words, this was difficult collection of poetry for me to read, as often the images created through the poet's words triggered my own memories of darkness, abuse, aloneness and pain. I found it to be outstanding, courageous and to be admired for the ability to share personal emotions and experiences.

Originally posted on review/interview website: http://flyingwithredhaircrow.wordpres...

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saeed Jones' mythology is of ruined small towns and their biblical ghosts, the humming bush and men at the edge of it, and a beautiful boy dancing through grief and lust in a dress of smoke. The lyricism and sex of these poems and their hot song, will prick your page turning fingers bloody.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saeed Jones
When the Only Light Is Fire
Sibling Rivalry Press
44 pages
7.6

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the entire thing through on my lunch hour, accidentally. It was just that urgent and visceral, goes directly into the vein without having to filter through the brain. I'll have to read through again for a more cerebral impression.

Absolutely should be at the top of any list of must-read contemporary southern poets. The "Jasper" poems, my god...

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy the way Saeed writes about being queer and black how those not only connect but also disconnect with the family and men around him.

Some favorites:

Boy in Stolen Evening Gown
Nocturne
Prelude to Bruise
He thinks He Can Leave Me

[Queer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are moments here when poetry is everything. The Jasper series is fantastic. Prelude to a Bruise with its repetition is both sexy and haunting.

[Ariya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sexy, sensual and sinful. A sharp angry blade cut through the mellow heart and all of sudden nothing left but warm pleasant coating blood.

After his gasp and god damn
grunt, after his zipper closes
its teeth, his tongue leaves
its shadows, leaves me
alone to pick pine needles
from my hair, to brush
leaves off my shirt as blades
of light hang from the trees,
as I re-learn my legs – mud
stained knees and walk back
to my burning house.

[Shion シキ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short poems that follow lines or abuse, LGBTQ+, and lifestyle-ish vibes. I personally found a lot of the poems to be repetative or use too simple of a vocabulary to make the extremely short length of the poems meaningful. There were some good ones, but just not enough.

[Amirah Azhar · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars! A short, sweet and aching read.

[ca daygon · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book so good it made me want to read it all over again right after i finished it

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"You are my sky burned
to blazing, the dazzle
before my body's exhausted
collapse,
fingers singed,
breath,
blue flame."

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Hunger is who we are / under a black lacquered moon," asserts Saeed Jones at the beginning of the very last entry in this pitch-perfect collection of darkly radiant poems. And, indeed, it is the transmutation of the past into the hungers that run through it, like rivers or hunters, by the mis-eclipsed light of a moon turned to night, that we can see unites the divergent identities plotted out in these poems - whether they be outlaw, intimate, world-making; or empty, enslaved and just plain evil - in the wolf's bane of their becoming, which will not leave them or others be. These are poems of serious social and sexual and political intensity but made better, more brilliant, by being combined with a burning ambiguity that turns back on itself and a noctographic aesthetic honesty that brings fire into focus as the only light these questions of libido and lethality can truly be seen by. In the charismatic burn that Jones provocatively unleashes, in equal parts, upon scenes of ardent sexuality ("king of my beheaded kingdom"), upon look-ins at the lopped love of kin ("Never an easy / dream"), upon treacherous reckonings with racist atrocity ("but I accept these men, / their sense of direction...") and upon dark inner nights of self-loathing ("he needs to tell me the story again"), the relations between needlessness and necessity, between the raw exertion of power over bodies and the desire to be free, gone or to self-erase, are carved out in "the language of sharp turns", a language the poems do not fully entrust themselves to, but, in their own sharp turn upon it, will place under the scanner of their lyrical distance, to softly probe for its limits and wants, in search of new connections. More than anything, Jones seems compelled to find through these missives something urgent and more honest than yet another reason to live: that is, he is after a reason to require, a grounds to demand a new horizon for actions, a basis to be "a backseat driver" and refuse the direction things seem always to be going, especially for blacks and queers. "Get up. Find your legs, / leave," Jones bids. The consequence of following his own advice, while looking backward passionately, is a debut that feels years ahead of itself, electric, sensual nerve at its keenest, a night pyre of thoughts at their finest.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This scintillating debut collection is filled with finely faceted gems precisely cut and carefully arranged on the black velvet of a poetic consciousness so sublime that it renders even the most heinous brutality a thing of beauty to behold (“Mississippi Drowning,” “Eclipse of My Third Life”) the intricate work of a fabulist and the finest jeweler. Bravo!

Favorite Poems:
“Kudzu”
“Boy in Stolen Evening Gown”
“Nocturne”
“Boy at Threshold”
“After the First Shot”
“Jasper, 1998: I”
“Jasper, 1998: II”
“Jasper, 1998: III”
“Body & Kentucky Bourbon”
“Sleeping Arrangement”
“Mississippi Drowning”
“Room 31”
“Cruel Body”
“He Thinks He Can Leave Me”
“Eclipse of My Third Life”

[Telly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of emotion and vivid storytelling, this is by far one of my favorite collections of poetry. I experienced everything from lust with Kudzu to painful grief with Jasper, 1998, I, II, and III. In fact, I tried to read these three poems to my partner and became too choked up to do so. The second actually brought me to tears. I'm not easily drawn to showing emotional responses in life, and for these poems to do this is a strong testament to their strength.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very sensual, frequently ... sad(?), and sometimes horrifying -- thinking about his Jasper sequence, about the murder of James Boyd, Jr. It gave me chills.

I'm only an occasional reader of poetry and sometimes unsure how the cadence should go, so was happy to find a few clips of the author reading his work online. Here's The Blue Dress in Mother's Closet.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Cinders drift in from a fire we can't see."

"We're dry tinder. Water won't answer our questions anymore..."

When the Only Light Is Fire is Saeed Jones' debut chapter book collection of poems. Much like his memoir, his writing style in his poems is honest, intense and filled with imagery that captures the readers attention from the start.

[Joshua Gage · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very deep and profound chapbook of poetry. Jones taps into the erotic as well as the political in this collection, exploring sexuality, race, southern politics, and more in these dense, lyrical poems. A very excellent collection.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are snippets this book trained me to search for in the words. The moments where the narrator's sense of self connect and grow. Though a little short, this is what a collected work of poems looks like, for me.

[Andrea Blancas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haunting. I'm still spinning. The opening line of "Meridian" reads: "Cinders drift in/from a fire we can't see." That fire leaves us burning for more. That fire is Saeed Jones.

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic, sensual, dark emergence from this first book, and emerging talented poet. Brilliant use of captivating language and stirring imagery. I recommend this book!

[willowdog]

Powerful, lyric poetry that paints wonderfully brutal, sexual, racial, and steamiy pictures, mostly set in rural areas and the South.

[hh · Rating 3 out of 5]

solid.

[Rachel Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly, I don't read a lot of poetry and often feel dumb while reading it. Saeed Jones' writing is visceral and vivid. I look forward to reading more from him!

[Luke Gorham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially a rough draft of Prelude to Bruise.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful, sensuous poetry though many (most?) of these can also be found in Jones's full-length collection, Prelude to Bruise

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intimate, intense poetry. Some of the best poetry I have read.

[Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5