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"Individually and collectively, the poems in Mark Jarman's beautiful book, To the Green Man, recognize both the need for the consolations of faith and the elusiveness of faith in the face of the hard facts of experience: the loss of loved ones, depression, mortal fears, the sheer contingencies of daily life. Beyond the wonderful music of his lines, the formal poise, the mix of narrative and lyric modes, what makes To the Green Man such an important and memorable book is its enactment of a spiritual struggle to be at once at home in the world and astonished by it."
—Alan Shapiro
"Called or not called, God is present: these words attributed to the Delphic Oracle serve as epigraph to one of the finest poems in Mark Jarman's stunning new collection. They also point to this poet's great theme and overshadowing preoccupation: the insoluble mystery (call it God if you wish) underlying human existence and the material world. Call on God and he is silent (and do not presume to supply him with words of your own); do not call on him, and he is nonetheless present and may indeed be calling on you. This is the ultimate paradox confronted by Jarman in poem after brilliantly executed poem—and it is his courageous confrontation of the mystery in so many of its guises that gives his work a depth and richness matched by very few poets of our time. To the Green Man is not only Mark Jarman's best book to date (there is not a weak poem in it), it is essential reading for all who wish to experience contemporary poetry at its most humane, meaningful and profound." —Frederick Morgan Reviewed as "Poet's Choice" by Edward Hirsch, The Washington Post, July 2004
In a time when it's all right for poetry to be "spiritual," and all wrong for any real poem to be "religious," Mark Jarman's eighth collection, To the Green Man, continues his audacious indifference to this contemporary taboo, leaping into the dangerous currents where poetry and religion meet. The book freshens and enlivens the lexicon of traditional American Christian belief by testing its doctrines and language against contemporary experience, placing Jarman squarely in the line of American poetry stretching from Anne Bradstreet to John Berryman. Jarman's art is centered in the profundity of religious faith and doubt. But his is not a narrow world, and the range of concern and subject that radiates from his center is wide: the dark side of the American father; the updated takes on primary Western texts (i.e., "Song of Roland," "Over the River and Through the Woods"); the sudden encounters with animals—foxes, swifts, coyotes, tanagers; the convincing and charming lyrical speculations on consciousness ("Astragaloi"). A sure practitioner of the hybrid form of lyric-narrative, Jarman can tell a disturbing story with the resonance of a novel, in just two pages of expertly timed tercets ("In the Tube"). The craft, the confidence with language as medium, is such that his touch is always elegant and sure. He writes as beautifully as any living poet.
Mark Jarman was born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, and grew up in California and Scotland. He is a professor of English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of eight additional books of poetry: North Sea (1978), The Rote Walker (1981), Far and Away (1985), The Black Riviera (1990), Iris (1992), Questions for Ecclesiastes (1997), Unholy Sonnets (2000), and To the Green Man (2004). Jarman’s awards include a Joseph Henry Jackson Award for his poetry in 1974, three NEA grants in poetry in 1977, 1983, and 1992, and a fellowship in poetry from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for 1991-1992. His book The Black Riviera won the 1991 Poets’ Prize. Questions for Ecclesiastes was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry and won the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and The Nation magazine.
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