Pen Name:
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Genre:
Articles, Essays, Memoir, Poetry, Literary Fiction
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Bio
Jordan Jones is an author, publisher, and genealogist.
He has published in dozens of journals, two books of poems: Sand & Coal (Ventura, California: Futharc Press, 1993) and The Wheel (San Jose, California: Leaping Dog Press, 2005), and two chapbooks of translations of René Daumal’s Le Contre Ciel (Black River Falls, Wisconsin: Obscure Publications, 2003). His fiction was anthologized in Anyone is Possible: Contemporary American Short Fiction (Palmdale, California: Red Hen Press, 1998) and his poetry in the American Book Award–winning What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1998). An essay, a short story, and a translation appeared in Pipe Dreams: The Drug Experience in Literature (Albuquerque: Coyote Arts, 2022).
He co-edited The Northridge Review (Cal State U, Northridge) and was poetry editor of California Quarterly (UC Davis). He founded Bakunin (1990–1997), a literary magazine “for the dead Russian anarchist in all of us.” In 2003, he co-founded and co-edited the online multimedia collaborative art exhibit, The 365 Project (the365project.org). He is the editor and co-publisher of Coyote Arts in Albuquerque.
He has been a technical writer, software business architect, director of software product development and information technology, and has served as a director of the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM), three genealogical societies, and two literary non-profits.
Essays/Short Stories
Anthology: Pipe Dreams: The Drug Experience in Literature
Published: Coyote Arts, 2022
“Angel Rivera and the Sidewalk Jesus”
“René Daumal, Carbon Tetrachloride, and Experiments in Near Death”
René Daumal, the French poet, translator, novelist, and essayist, combined the deadly effects of the chemical carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) with an intense desire to understand the au-delà, the beyond. This essay discusses his experiments in near-death experiences as discussed in the writings of his work, including the book of poems Le Contre-Ciel.
There are two histories of drug use: the social history and the secret history of subjective experience. From antiquity to the present, people have sought artificial paradise in the stimulations and insights afforded by the use of intoxicants. Famous literary figures have often been the first to experiment with little-known drugs, and to champion their unique fascination upon the human imagination. In this remarkable anthology, a dazzling array of authors, including H. G. Wells, Marie Corelli, Guy de Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Stephen Crane, Sadegh Hedayat, Santiago Dabove, Jean Cocteau, William James, Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, and a host of others from many cultures and historical periods, raids a pharmacopoeia containing ether, absinthe, morphine, hashish, opium, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, chloral hydrate, psilocybin, ayahuasca, carbon tetrachloride, LSD, amyl nitrate, ecstasy, and angel dust, in flights of descriptive prose of unparalleled suggestive power and visionary splendor.
Available for Sale
Poetry
“Pueblo” ♦ Vice-Versa, A University of Hawai‘i ezine
Anthology: What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop
Published: Parallax Press, 1998
“Zen Baker”
With poems from spiritual teachers to jazz musicians, from the monastery to the street, What Book!? brings together a boad range of verse, expressions of living in an awakened way. ” A poet once located poetry as somewhere before or after words take place. Mindfulness is the practice of finding that realm, dwelling there, and cultivating the ability to live completely in the present, deeply aware and appreciative of life.” – from the author’s Preface. “This enigmatically titled anthology offers numerous delights and valuable evidence that great poetic variety, from haiku and witty two liners to page-long discourses, has by now given distinct expression to Western Buddhism.” – Publisher’s Weekly.
