It was in high school that Mark Jones first displayed an interest in writing, initially as a means to facilitate his studies in blues music as a burgeoning musician, when he began writing lyrics for original blues songs. He also became aware of poetry through rock song lyrics by artists such as Peter Brown (for Jack Bruce), Lennon & McCartney, Dylan, Tim Buckley & Larry Beckett, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, and Jimi Hendrix.

At the University of Miami, in his freshman writing class, he learned valuable lessons in how to organize his thoughts in written composition. While attending Kent State, he became infatuated by the poetry of Bob Dylan, and through Dylan, discovered the French Symbolists, especially Arthur Rimbaud and through Rimbaud, Mallarme, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Nerval, St. Pol Roux, Moreas, Valery, Laforgue and other Symbolists as well as the Surrealist writings of Éluard, Breton, Aragon, Apollinaire and the like.

While attending Kent, he was also introduced to 20th century American poetry in a class taught by Ed McGehee, particularly exploring the work of Kenneth Patchen, James Wright, Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, Weldon Kees, Robert Creeley, Sylvia Plath, Gary Snyder, and the Irish poet, Gallway Kinnell. He also had the opportunity to attend workshops given by Creeley, Robert Duncan, Kinnell and others. Shortly thereafter, he became exposed to more poets from other countries such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Bloch, Bely, Akhmatova, Pessoa, Rilke, Novalis, Machado, Lorca, Yeats, Paz, Villon and traditional Chinese and Japanese poets.

Around this time, Mr. Jones began writing poetry, as well as music reviews for a local paper. While he continued to hone his craft in poetry, he gradually began writing essays and submitting some to noted publications. His first published work was in Art in America, on the Norwegian artist Jens Johannessen, whom he discovered while staying as a house guest of Paul Hogan, the director of the Munch Museum in Oslo in 1974. In the subsequent years, his range of writing interests grew to include not only music and art, but politics, philosophy, sociology, health, film, literature, martial arts, sports, religion, travel, and so on. He has been published in many newspapers and magazines including Newsweek, the Village Voice, the New York Times, Dirty Linen, Mojo Magazine, the New York Jewish Week, the Cleveland Jewish News, Black Belt, Tai Chi Magazine, Inside Kung Fu, the Gannett Papers, and others.

His essays have received international acclaim from noted authors such as Richard F. Thomas, author and classics professor at Harvard University, Stephen Pickering, and poets Jeffrey Schwartz, Andrew Acciaro and Jeffrey Edrich.

Mark's new book of collected poems and artwork entitled: “The Cry of the Lonely, the Song of the Poet” is now available. In the near future, many more books will be published once they have been completed, including "The Principles of Body Mechanics," "Chinese Poems from Landscape Paintings," an extensive collection of essays, and "Immortality: A Philosophical Construct for Personal Health, Inner Peace and Creative Thought."