Quill & Quire talks about Jones's resurrection

In advance of Coach House and Three O'Clock Press's Tribute to Jones event, Sue Carter Flinn wrote a story about Jones's legacy and revival at the Quill & Quire Omni. Here's an excerpt:

When he was alive, Daniel Jones had a small but hardcore following. Now, 17 years after his death from suicide, the Toronto literary and punk icon is being celebrated with reissues of two out-of-print titles.

Jones published nine works before his death: the novel Obsessions (Mercury Press), a book of poetry, The Brave Never Write Poetry (Coach House Press), and seven chapbooks. Two books, the novel 1978 (Rush Hour Revisions) and a collection of linked short stories, The People One Knows (Mercury Press), were published posthumously. Jones was also a literary critic, editor, and publisher, co-founding Streetcar Editions with Robyn Gillam ...

... Coach House poetry editor and friend of Jones, Kevin Connolly, wrote the original introduction to 1978 (the Three O’Clock edition also includes a new introduction by Liz Worth, author of Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond). For several years, Connolly had been considering a new edition of The Brave Never Write Poetry, a collection of poems written before Jones sobered up at age 26, but was waiting for an appropriate time. "There's a certain romanticism around [Jones's life] you don't want to be accused of promoting, so once it got to about 20 years since the book came out I started thinking about doing a re-release," he says.

When The Brave Never Write Poetry came out in 1985, Connolly gave the book its only positive review in his literary publication What! He believes Jones's Bukowskiesque style was out of step with experimental and language poetry forms, which were popular at the time.

Read the full story at Quill & Quire Omni. (Subscription required.)