Arlene Swift Jones (1928 – 2013) was a poet and writer who led an adventurous life. She was born in Grinnell, Iowa, and raised on a family farm in a Norwegian Quaker community. Passionate about poetry and literature from a young age, she was determined to explore the world. In 1949 she graduated from Cornell College in Iowa and earned a master’s degree in English from Columbia University in 1951. She sailed to Norway in the summer of 1951 to attend the University of Oslo and discover her origins, and then bicycled through England, France, and Germany. She found employment with the U.S. Army in Salzburg, Austria, where she met and married Major Frank William Jones Jr. of New Hartford, CT in 1952. With her husband, who first joined the OSS and then the CIA, she lived in multiple countries raising three daughters in Germany, Poland, Cyprus, Norway, and Switzerland. During the hostilities in Cyprus in 1964, Arlene was evacuated with her daughters to Greece, Lebanon, and Israel. As a teacher, lecturer, and educator, Arlene worked at the elementary, high school, and university levels at numerous institutions in many countries. From 1959 to 1962 she served as the principal of the American School of Warsaw, Poland. In the late 1970's she was the assistant academic dean at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, CT. She earned a second master’s degree from the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program in 1995. She is the winner of Fellowships from both the Ragdale Foundation (Frances Shaw Fellow) and the MacDowell. She is published in literary publications: Prairie Schooner, Wind, Green Mountains Review, Kansas Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Cimarron Review, Kestrel, Kalliope, and Commentary of the Hartford Courant. Her work is anthologized by Calyx in Women and Aging and in A Wider Giving. She received an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a Denny Prize. She published three books of poems: The Insisting Thistle, Deenewood; A Sequence, and Pomegranate Wine. Her most recent publication, God, Put Out One of My Eyes; A Cyprus Diary 1962-1965, was awarded honorable mention by The Eric Hoffer Award for Books. In 1975 Arlene and her husband retired from foreign service to live in the family home in New Hartford, CT. Arlene galvanized the creation of the new modern library facility that New Hartford residents enjoy today. Arlene’s final book, No Stones in Heaven, weaves together history, fiction and autobiography, telling a story of love, hard work, and integrity of those who find and live the quintessential American dream.
Portrait by Frank Jones
