Poet Seaborn Jones to be eulogized Wednesday

Seaborn Jones was a poet.

He knew it even in junior high school in Macon, where he had a group of artist friends. Jones’ art was poetry.

“He was a poet from the time I met him,” said Pam Lowe Preston, a visual artist who was a member of that group. “He was the real thing.”

Jones died Friday at age 71. His funeral will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Hart’s at the Cupola on Peake Road.

Jones had other jobs over the years, including a stint in the Marine Corps, but he was always a poet.

“He was in his sixth decade of writing poems,” said Kevin Cantwell, a longtime friend of his.

During his time in the Marines, Jones even earned a nickname during basic training based on that identity, recalled poet Gordon Johnston, professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Mercer University.

During a reading in Macon as part of the release of the anthology “Writing on Napkins at the Sunshine Club,” Jones entertained the crowd with the story of the drill instructor who asked him what he wanted to do with his life. Jones answered honestly, and was thereafter known as “the poet.”

Jones was proud of his time in the Marines, Preston said. He also loved animals. He did weekend programming for the Museum of Arts and Sciences and later served as the live animal curator at the museum and as writer-in-residence. He also worked as a lighting and set designer on the “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” show and spent time in San Francisco before returning to Macon.

“I’m going to miss his voice,” Preston said.

Asked if she meant his artistic voice or how he talked, she answered: “Both.”

“He was wonderful. He was one-of-a-kind and his poetry reflects that,” Preston said. “He had a unique voice.”

Preston recently painted a portrait of Jones, and he left her a message on her answering machine thanking her for the piece in his gravelly Southern accent -- an accent Preston said was as Macon as it comes.

“He is a product of this place like nobody else,” she said.

A self-described surrealist poet, Jones was well known in the San Francisco poetry scene of the 1970s and then in Georgia after he returned to Macon, said Cantwell, who is chair of the media, culture and the arts program at Middle Georgia State College.

He valued economy and weaved in elements of humor as well as darkness in his poetry, friends said.

“He worked very hard at his craft,” Cantwell said. “He strove for a precise and surprising language.”

Jones received a number of recognitions for his poetry and published six books of poems. He earned a Georgia Author of the Year in poetry in 1998, two Individual Artist Awards in Poetry from the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Prize in 1996, and the 1991 Alan Collins Scholar in Poetry award.

Jones won the inaugural Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry from Mercer University Press in 2011 with the collection “Going Farther into the Woods than the Woods Go,” and it was published by Mercer University Press in 2012. It earned a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize.

Jones is survived by his daughter, Bronwyn Jones Fussell and her husband, Scott Fussell; granddaughters Raeder Fussell and Denny Fussell, all of Macon; a brother, Victor R. Jones of Macon; and a sister, Anne M. Lingg of Lakeland, Florida.

Cantwell and another friend and poet, Judson Mitcham, are planning a memorial reading event for later this year.

To reach writer Mark Vanderhoek, call 744-4331.

This story was originally published October 7, 2014 at 5:47 PM with the headline "Poet Seaborn Jones to be eulogized Wednesday ."