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ELEGY FOR THE SOUTHERN DRAWL

By Rodney Jones

Houghton Mifflin, 102 pages, $22

Poet Rodney Jones writes about the world with wisdom and self effacing wit. In the title poem, we hear Southern accents lovingly portrayed in “the blank verse of the forklift man” and “a grunted `hidey’/ In the line at the cash register at Shoney’s.” Jones’ speakers listen to people who are sometimes embarrassed to talk. He hears the cadences of people at work on the land. In “For Alexis,” the opening poem, a father and his college-age daughter dig a ditch together, swearing, and alluding to “The Inferno.”