"Ladies, has your man been letting you down lately, failing to communicate his love and gratitude and leaving your hearts in despair? Maybe someday he’ll manage to cough up his deepest feelings in a manner that is satisfactory, but in the meantime, Kennedy F. Jones will gladly serve as his surrogate. “Take a journey through my emotional thoughts,” Mr. Jones says on the back cover, “as I express myself with love letters, essays, and poetry . . . my thoughts are a guide to help you discover the real qualities of measuring a man’s love.” In an all-stops-out indie hardcover edition that’s categorized—likely as not by Jones himself—as “Relationship/Poetry,” Jones presents a cross-disciplinary manifesto intended, most of all, to restore women’s faith that there are indeed many Men of Love™ waiting for them. Interspersed among dozens of loving ruminations (among them “Defining the Man of Love™, ”Romancing Thoughts of Appreciation”, “Guide Me Into Your Ecstasy”) are poems (“The Softness of My Love”) and corresponding worksheets (“Describe different ways in which I can be soft with you”), pickup art featuring solitary red roses in a variety of settings, and chapter-ending questions titled “Inside Your Heart”:
• I want to dance with you throughout the night. Will you dance with me? If so, what song would you select as “our song”?
• If I place the world in your hands and ask you to pick a place where we can celebrate our love, what place would you select?
Hot damn, maybe the guy’s on to something. I have NEVER asked a lady where we might go to celebrate our love. But the problem here, really, is that the book is intended for women, not for men. If men were the target audience, we’d have thousands of spontaneous cases of dudes saying, “Baby, where should we celebrate our love tonight?” There would be love everywhere, getting celebrated. Crime and alcoholism would drop. Angels would sing. The world would be better. Instead, the entire thing boils down to one long mack attack, and all we’ll get will be a spike in conversations like this:
HER: How come you never ask me to celebrate our love? Time, place, manner, et cetera. HIM: You mean like the Peabo Bryson/Roberta Flack jam?
HER: I mean like making me feel like a woman! Like KENNEDY F. JONES would make me feel like! HIM: I’m goin’ out.
Just don’t stay out too late. And watch your back: Jones (“This book is dedicated to my
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