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.