Wild Asterisks in Cloud

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island and honorary chief of the Mi’kmaq of Prince
Edward Island.

D.G. Jones is a prime example of the scholar–poet. In reading this
collection, one is constantly aware of being in the presence of a
mature, highly cultivated mind. Its wide-ranging references echo
cultures past and present and the language enshrining them. (At times,
general readers may feel that Jones’s allusions and connections are
too subjective, intended primarily for his personal satisfaction.)
Particularly striking is his exuberant delight in the English language.
His poems are rooted in the imagist tradition of economy of words,
sparse syntax, and the sudden metaphor (e.g., “The counterpane of the
waves”). And this witty, acute, and ironic (but always good-humored)
observer and interpreter of life is no mean artist, as his illustrative
black-and-white graphics show.