ArcanaStephen Jonas Beginning in the 1950s until his untimely death at age 49, Stephen Jonas (1921 1970) was an influential if underground figure of the New American Poetry. A gay African American poet of self obscured origins, heavily influenced by Ezra Pound and Charles Olson, the Boston based Jonas was a pioneer of the serial poem and an erudite mentor to such acknowledged masters as Jack Spicer and John Wieners, even as he lived a shadowy existence