Born in California in 1951, raised in Japan and Mexico, DB Jonas trained as a classical musician in his childhood and took up the study of Middle Eastern stringed instruments and the music of Europe’s Roma as a youth. After several Wanderjahre in Spain, France, North Africa, and Italy following secondary school, he studied literature and continental philosophy at the Universities of California and Padova, later earning advanced degrees in Near Eastern Studies and Comparative Literature at Princeton and Yale.
Interrupting a doctoral dissertation on Proust, Nietzsche, and Levinas to pursue an employment opportunity in industry, he never returned to academics. Instead, he became increasingly captivated by the development of complex engineered systems and the study of complex dynamics in natural phenomena. He moved to New Mexico in 1999, where he managed a succession of business operations primarily concerned with the environmental remediation of nuclear and radiochemical facilities. Retiring to his orchards in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico, he has returned to his earliest avocations in art history, music, and poetry.
Mr. Jonas has been a finalist for the Riddled with Arrows Ars Poetica Award, nominated for a number of Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes, and has been widely published in journals throughout the US, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Holland, France, Romania, Australia, and Israel. His first poetry collection, Tarantula Season and Other Poems, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. Along with his wife Julie and their dogs, he tends his orchards and gardens surrounded by the manifold inspirations of the Mountain Southwest.
Further examples of his work are accessible at:
jonaspoetry.com
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (February 20, 2025)