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Hank Jones considers Texas and New Mexico, the birthplaces of his parents, to be as close to home as he knows, growing up as he did in the wake of his father's military career. After finishing a Master's in English at Tarleton State University, he taught for two years in Japan, then put a backpack on and traveled in various parts of the world until his money ran out. At that point, he got a job at his alma mater and has been teaching English there for twenty years (with a four-year stint as Assistant Director in the International Office). He received an MFA from Oklahoma City University in January 2019 and enjoyed the Oklahoma poetry scene so much, he and his wife now live in a house off Keystone Lake outside of Tulsa. His poetry has been published in Cybersoleil: A Literary Journal, Voices de la Luna, Dragon Poet Review, the Concho River Review, and Red River Review. He's also contributed poems to The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology from Lamar University Literary Press, Speak Your Mind: Poems of Protest & Resistance, published by Village Books Press, the Stone Renga Anthology from Tale Feathers Press, and most recently Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush (The Poetry of Oklahoma), edited by Ron Wallace.
"Hank Jones's Too Late for Manly Hands, his premier collection, attests an abundant, big-hearted vision of life. In these poems he traces the sometimes tangled intersections of innocence and initiation, fury and compassion, hilarity and grief. Topics range broadly, from travels in Japan to the sheer rapture of listening to a Beethoven string quartet, but whether he's describing earthy Boy Scout rituals, his wife's battle with cancer, or a turbulent father-son relationship, his disarming honesty engages and inspires, brightening ""the temporary flicker of human life."" Even in confronting manifest wrongs like climate change or unjust imprisonment, he avoids any tinge of self-righteousness, often calling himself to account for the ills. The 13th-century poet Rumi writes, ""Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing or rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there,"" and it's in this luminous space that readers find the poetry of Hank Jones, to their everlasting enrichment. Carol Coffee Reposa 2018 Texas Poet Laureate"
